Family Bibles are often precious heirlooms, holding great sentimental value and genealogical information as a family legacy. They can contain precious records of family history, handwritten accounts of ancestral events, such as births, deaths, baptisms, marriages and so forth, as well as documentation of noteworthy historical events. Their actual value in the marketplace can be radically different from its value to the family.

This is where a professional appraisal can help. The market value of a Bible can depend on numerous factors, such as:

• Binding and printing material. Is it leather bound, cloth bound? Gilt imprinted?
• General condition. Bibles with loose bindings, worn covers, pages missing or torn, will be worth less than those in good condition.
• Signatures of any noteworthy or historical individuals
• American Bibles printed before 1850 and European Bibles printed before 1700 are usually more valuable than later editions.
• Illustrations or “illuminations” will increase the value, especially if they are in color, or gilt highlighted.

The Bible is the most printed book in all history, and there have been numerous versions of it since Johannes Gutenberg printed the first edition on movable type in the early 1450s. About 49 copies of that one are still known to exist. If you have one of those, then you are set for life!

This is where Sisco Antiques Appraisals comes in. Just click on the link below, and you can get the process started to help you determine the value of your book.

https://siscoantiquesappraisals.com/appraisal/

The title page from a complete Robert Barker Geneva Bible dated 1608 reads in part “THE / BIBLE. / THAT IS, / THE HOLY SCRIPTURES / conteined [sic] in the Old and New / TESTAMENT…. / London by Robert Bar- / ker, Printer to the Kings / most Excellent / Majesties / 1608.” It contains all the books of the Apocrypha, and it sold for a highly respectable $1760. Most notably, Barker was the publisher of the first King James version of the Bible in 1611. He produced several editions of the “Breeches Bible,” so named because of a peculiar translation of Genesis 3:17, in which Adam and Eve “sewed figge leaves together and made themselves breeches.” He also published what came to be known as the “Wicked Bible,” containing an all-time classic typographical error, in which the seventh of the Ten Commandments was misprinted as “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

This copy of a Gutenberg Bible is in the New York Public Library. It was bought by James Lenox in 1847, and was the first known copy to be acquired by an American citizen.