It was initially estimated to value between US$4 – 6 million by auction house Christie’s.

A copy of William Shakespeare’s First Folio of complete and original published plays has been sold for a record US$9.98 million at auction in New York.

The book from 1623 was published seven years after the Bard’s death and fetched the price for being the first collected edition of his plays.

This copy that went under hammer on Wednesday is the first complete copy to go on auction since 2001. The previous record for that sale was US$6.1 million.

The First Folio copy was sold to an anonymous buyer by Mills College in Oakland, California, a private college that has owned it since the 1960s.

It was initially estimated to value between US$4 – 6 million by auction house Christie’s.

The First Folio contains 36 plays, 18 of which would otherwise not have been recorded. Those 18 include Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and The Tempest.

An approximate 235 copies of the book exists, but only a five or six versions are known to be complete versions kept in the ownership of private hands. One of them is currently owned by Oxford University and sold for US$4.5 million in 2003.

(Source: BBC)