Our class on Tuesday raised a lot of questions for me about ancient text. The one question I really thought about was how much are all of these pieces of work worth? When I ask the question in class, I was surprised when the librarian said she did not know what many of the pieces were worth and if she did she would not tell us the answer. Since these works are such treasured pieces in our library, I would think that there would have to be some type of numerical value on them especially since they are from such a long time ago and represent such an important part of our history.

As I was extremely interested in how much some of these books were worth, I looked online and found an article about The Top Ten Rarest Books. Although I was surprised by some of the books on the list, the most surprising thing I learned was about what makes a book rare and valuable. I always thought it had to do with the content of the book which is not necessarily true. Collectors actually look for books “that are associated with a particular author or a major historical event or era, or simply because they’re incredibly old.” This information taught me that really the worth of books is just like an other supply and demand product it all depends on the buyers and the market not necessarily the actual worth of the good. Also, I was extremely surprised with how valuable The Gutenberg Bible actually is in today’s market. I would have never guessed just one leaf went on sale for $74,000. It just shows how important Johannes Gutenberg was for our history.