The World’s Most Expensive Books

Recently, a rare first-edition copy of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” sold for $90,000 at auction, mainly because the title was misspelled and the book itself contained typos. While $90,000 is a lot of money, that price tag is minuscule compared to what the books on this list have sold for.

To compile this article, we looked at the most expensive books to have ever sold and adjusted their sale price for inflation in 2019 dollars. We did not include books that were solely made of art — for example, the “The Lilies” sold for $5.5 million in 1985, but the volumes were made of individual watercolors, which were later divided among investors.

We also didn’t count the two-page “Founding Rules of Basketball,” which sold for $4.3 million in 2010 but falls more into the category of sports memorabilia than books.