Literary Hub: “Unwrapping the Most Beautiful Gutenberg of Them All:”….Most scholars believe that Gutenberg produced about 180 copies, and among these, most likely 150 were printed on paper and 30 on animal skin known as vellum. The price of the book when it left the printer’s workshop was believed to be about thirty florins, equivalent to a clerk’s wages for three years. The vellum versions were priced higher, since they were more labor-intensive and expensive to produce—a single copy required the skin of 170 calves.

Estelle’s copy is one of the 45 known to exist in 1950. They’re in various conditions, scattered around the world in private libraries and museums: 12 in America, 11 in Germany, 9 in Great Britain, 4 in France, 2 in Italy, 2 in Spain, and 1 each in Austria, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, and Switzerland. Fewer than half have all their original pages, a pre-condition of being designated “perfect.”

Hers is perhaps the most beautiful of the surviving paper copies. Despite its age, this volume lacks no pages and has no serious damage. Designated as Number 45 in a definitive list compiled by Hungarian book authority Ilona Hubay, this Bible has clearly received special care through the centuries, or at least supremely benign neglect…”