2. Gospel of Henry the Lion
Manuscript edition of the Gospel, made around 1188 by order of Heinrich the Lion (1129-1195), Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, a representative of the Welf dynasty, which for several centuries had great influence in Europe. The manuscript includes four Gospels, has 226 pages, decorated in a unique style by the monks and novices of the Benedictine abbey of Helmarshausen. After the death of Henry the Lion, the manuscript was considered lost for a long time. In the 19th century it was discovered in Prague, in 1861 it was acquired by George V, King of Hanover, whose founder is Henry the Lion. Five years later, George V was deposed and fled to Austria, taking the manuscript with him, among other things. Further, the trace of the relic was again lost, but in 1983 an unknown seller put up the "Gospel of Henry the Lion" for auction. During the auction, Germany became its owner - the federal government, the governments of Bavaria and Lower Saxony, as well as the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation participated in financing the purchase. The manuscript is currently kept in the Duke August Library in Wolfenbüttel (Germany).

3. Birds of America, John James Audubon
The Birds of America is a unique book in many ways. Its first edition was printed in the United States in 1827-1838, during which time only about 200 copies were produced, printed in a giant format, which Audubon himself called "double elephant folio" - each page is 50 inches high. The complete copy of "Birds of America" ​​contains 435 hand-coloured prints of engravings measuring 90 by 60 cm, which depict birds in life size.
Currently, 119 complete copies of Birds of America are known to exist, 108 of them are kept in various museums around the world and only 11 are in private collections. Such books are extremely rare on the market, and each such case is regarded by book collectors as a sensation.

4. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
A unique copy of the first edition of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, "the father of English poetry" and one of the founders of English literature. The book was printed in 1477 in the printing house of the English pioneer William Caxton in Westminster Abbey. To date, only 12 known copies of the first edition have survived, of which only the book exhibited at Christie's is in a private collection. The book has a rich history of its own: its first appearance at auction dates back to 1776, when it was sold at Christie's. In 1998, the book became the property of a group of London booksellers.

5. "The Duke of Northumberland's Bestiary"
The handwritten bestiary is a kind of medieval encyclopedia of the animal world, containing 112 color images of real and fictional creatures and their descriptions on 148 pages. The author of the handwritten book is not known, the copy is dated approximately 1250-1260. There are no more than 40 such English bestiaries around the world, and they rarely find their way to the market. As experts explained in 1990, the bestiary had last been put up for auction in 1889. In addition, the copy of the Duke of Northumberland is the last remaining in private hands, and not in the museum collection. At the auction in 1990, a private collector from the United States, whose name was not disclosed, became its new owner.