Utah family selling their first edition copy of the Book of Mormon for at least $100,000.

The 1830 edition is going up for auction. But one expert says this particular printing isn’t all that rare.

(Richard Hatch) A first edition copy of the Book of Mormon has been sitting in a safe-deposit box at a Zions Bank in Logan for nearly 40 years. It will go up for auction on Sept. 4, 2025.

To get a copy of the Book of Mormon, one can go to the website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and request one for free.

To own a nearly 200-year-old first edition, held for decades by a family with historic Utah roots, an auction house is already receiving bids of six figures.

The copy of the first edition, published in 1830, has been sitting in a safe-deposit box at the Zions Bank branch in Logan for nearly four decades, according to Richard Hatch, whose family owns it.

(Potter & Potter Auctions) An 1830 first-edition copy of the Book of Mormon with its slip cover, owned by a Utah family for decades and going up for sale through the Chicago-based company Potter & Potter Auctions. Live bidding is scheduled to start Sept. 4, 2025.

Hatch and his siblings, none of whom is a practicing Latter-day Saint, have enlisted Chicago-based Potter & Potter Auctions to sell the copy. The auction house has listed the book in its catalog at an estimated value of $120,000 to $150,000. The auction house said it has already received an advance bid of $100,000. Live bidding begins Thursday.

Hatch, founder and CEO of The Hatch Academy of Magic and Music, said his grandfather, insurance executive J. Eastman Hatch, likely bought the copy in the 1950s from the Salt Lake City bookseller Sam Weller for $150, “which was actually kind of a high price for it at that time.”

J. Eastman Hatch’s wife and Richard’s grandmother, Florence Nibley Hatch, was a social worker in Salt Lake City and the daughter of Charles W. Nibley — a counselor in the church’s First Presidency under President Heber J. Grant from 1925 to 1931. The Cache County town of Nibley was named for Florence’s father.

Richard Hatch said that after his mother died this year, he and his siblings decided it would be a good time to sell the book. If the book continues to appreciate in value, he said, it could complicate the estate process.

First editions of the Book of Mormon have fetched high prices at previous auctions. In June 2024, Swann Auction Galleries in New York City auctioned off a copy for $185,000 after setting a presale estimate between $60,000 and $90,000.

(Potter & Potter Auctions) The title page of an 1830 first-edition copy of the Book of Mormon, owned by a Utah family for decades and going up for sale through the Chicago-based company Potter & Potter Auctions. Live bidding is scheduled to start Sept. 4, 2025.

Latter-day Saints believe that church founder Joseph Smith translated the book from gold plates he found in upstate New York. Hatch said this first edition was the only printing that includes Smith’s preface in which he explains that he had lost 116 pages of the translated scripture and that the Lord told him to continue the work without retranslating that portion.

Ken Sanders, owner of Salt Lake City’s Ken Sanders Rare Books, said first editions of the Book of Mormon are not what he would consider “rare books” — despite the high prices some copies have fetched.

“There were 5,000 copies of that book printed in 1830,” Sanders said.

Some have estimated 500 or so copies remain, but Sanders said he has personally seen hundreds of copies — and sold between 50 and 100 of them.

An example of a truly rare book, Sanders said, is the Book of Commandments, another early Latter-day Saint publication with divine revelations Smith said he received. Sanders said there are 29 known copies, and roughly six of them are in private hands. One copy — Sanders said, though he added that he couldn’t disclose details — sold privately for $3 million in Salt Lake City.

The first edition Book of Mormon, Sanders said, finds its value not in scarcity but in being “the holy grail of LDS book collecting. … It’s the book every LDS person knows, whether you’re a collector or not.”

The 1830 edition isn’t the only book Hatch and his family is selling from his grandfather’s collection. The auction will feature three other Latter-day Saint books: An 1841 edition of The Book of Mormon; a collection of early church writings including The Seer magazine; and “View of the Hebrews,” an 1823 book by a Congregationalist minister in Vermont that some commentators — including Smith biographer Fawn Brodie — have noted has similarities to the Book of Mormon.

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