Skip to content Skip to footer

Facsimile Reproductions Buyer's Guide

An Overview of our Facsimiles & How They are Made from the Originals

PLEASE NOTE:  We are no longer in the business of selling Facsimile Reproductions.   We now deal exclusively in original ancient rare Bibles.  The discussion of the nature of facsimile reproductions shown below is provided here only for reference and education.  Facsimile Reproductions are no longer available, and they will not be available again in the future.  We are now focussed exclusively on original rare and antique Bibles

Below is our original discussion of facsimile reproductions, as it appeared in our website during the years that we offered these materials.  Again… they are no longer available.

If you have an interest in the important printings of the ancient English language Bibles, such as those shown on the Ancient Rare Bibles & Books page of our website… but you find their prices to be well beyond your budget, facsimile reproductions may be an option.  A facsimile (pronounced “FAX-EMILY”) reproduction is a precise photographic replica, an exact duplicate copy, made from the original. Now anyone can afford to build a library of the original English Bible translations.

To make our high-quality facsimile reproductions, we take one of our genuine original ancient Bibles, and carefully remove its binding. Then, we scan in each page one-at-a-time, front and back, at super-high resolution on a commercial-grade flatbed photographic scanner, creating a digital photograph of each leaf. These hundreds of images take many days to scan.  When the printing is done, we have ONE complete set of pages for a facsimile reproduction. Those pages are taken to a custom binding shop, where they are bound one-at-a-time in hardcover synthetic or genuine leather bindings.

Because they are done literally one-at-a-time, it is not possible for us to capitalize on the large production cost discounts available on press runs of several thousand at once. Our per-unit production costs are therefore quite high because we only sell several hundred of each of our facsimiles every year to the small “niche market” of Christians who are interested in the history of the Bible. That is why they average a couple hundred dollars each… and our profit margins are very modest even at those prices. These are hand-assembled, high-quality books… not to be confused with cheap “bound photocopy” reproductions.

Because these are literally PHOTOGRAPHIC reproductions, they look EXACTLY LIKE the genuine originals… down to the shape of the punctuation marks… “the camera does not lie”. In contrast to the practice of “reprinting” an edition, where a layout artist tries to re-create something that merely looks very similar to the original; the facsimile reproductions that we offer look ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to the originals, because they were made from photographs of the originals.

Imagine having a beautiful leather-bound $400,000 First Edition of the 1611 King James Bible… or a $35,000 First Edition of the 1560 Geneva Bible… or a $2 Million 1385 Wycliffe New Testament… for around a couple hundred dollars each! You can now affordably create an entire library of the most important First Editions of God’s Word in the English language.

We hope you enjoy browsing through all of our facsimile reproductions, and reading about the fascinating story behind each one.