A first-edition copy of the Book of Mormon sold for $240,000 Thursday at an auction hosted by Potter & Potter Auctions in Chicago.

Reid Moon — owner and collector of books, documents and artifacts at Moon’s Rare Books in Utah — told the Deseret News the $240,000 sale price is a record, as a first-edition copy of the Book of Mormon “has never sold for more than $200,000 at auction.”

The previous high was set in 2007 , when a copy with provenance sold for $180,000.

That copy had belonged to Orson Pratt, a former apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Yet having submitted a final bid of $180,000 — or $216,000 with fees — for the recently sold copy himself, Moon said he was “not really surprised” to see the copy sell for “almost a quarter-million dollars.”

“Ther

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