In a nail-biting, down-to-the-wire bidding war, a version of a book that can be had for free in many hotel room drawers was sold this week at auction for $80,000.
A first edition of the Book of Mormon, the founding text of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was auctioned by EBTH, an online auction house. The starting bid was $1, but the final 15 minutes of the weeklong auction were punctuated by rapidly rising bids in mostly $500 increments.
While not a record for a first-edition Book of Mormon — that was set at $180,000 in 2007 — it is almost double the price for another first-edition Book of Mormon sold in 2014 and significantly higher than another sold for $52,500 in 2016.