Bay Psalm Book Auction Smashes Record For Print Book With $14,200,000 Sale Price From Sotheby's

NEW YORK (RNS) On a dark, damp and expensive Tuesday night at Sotheby’s auction house in Manhattan, one of the 11 surviving copies of the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in English in America (and the first book of Scripture), was sold for the highest price ever recorded for a print book in open sale, $14.2 million (for a bid of $12.5 million, plus fees).

That price was a million dollars more than the $11.5 million paid for the previous record-holder, John James Audubon’s “Birds of America,” in 2010.

The psalm book’s new owner is the private equity fund founder and philanthropist David Rubenstein, who called in his bid from Australia. According to Sotheby’s auctioneer David Redden, who gaveled down the sale in two and a half minutes of concerted bidding, Rubenstein, a well-known antiquities buyer and donator, intends to loan the ancient Puritan hymnal to libraries around the country, eventually putting it on long-term loan to one of them.

Bay Psalm Book Auction Smashes Record For Print Book With $14,200,000 Sale Price From Sotheby's