The Magna Carta
The Magna Carta, the thirteenth-century charter that laid the foundation for the future of the law as we know it, is one of the most famous texts in history. Naturally, it earns a high spot on this list. The text was one of the earliest to lay out the concept of basic human rights and limit the powers of a king. Today, only seventeen copies predating 1300 survive. One sold for a whopping AU$33.1 million at a 2007 auction. The identity of the buyer is most likely David Rubenstein, who is also the lucky (or perhaps just wealthy) owner of the Bay Psalm Book. His reasoning for spending so much money? He thought it ‘very important’ that there be a copy of the Magna Carta in the United States. It’s widely believed that the document helped inspire the Declaration of Independence.
The Codex Leicester
You might know this author’s name: Leonardo da Vinci. You might know the buyer’s name as well: Bill Gates. The current record for the most expensive book of all time belongs to this 72-page notebook filled with the Renaissance genius’s notes and theories. In the early 1700s, the Codex was purchased by the Earl of Leicester, hence its name. In 1980, an art collector bought it from the Leicester estate, and none other than Bill Gates bought it from the collector in 1994. The Codex set Gates back a cool US$30.8 million. Gates decided to share his purchase with the world, and did it in the most Bill Gates way possible: he scanned the pages of the book and turned them into a Windows 95 screensaver.
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Source: RD.com
