When a woman approached Ken Sanders on PBS's Antiques Roadshow to get a hymnal she found in her basement appraised, he asked her if she knew the value of what she brought him.
"I have no clue. Absolutely none," she said.
That's when Sanders let her know it was worth $40,000 to $50,000. Her reaction was emotional, to say the least.
Sanders explained that a book like this was very rare. People keep and cherish their scriptures, which is why so many early printings of LDS scriptures still exist. But hymnals are meant to be disposable. And this 1844 hymnal, the Bellow Falls hymnal, is one of the rarest of all. “This is one of the earliest hymnals issues by the LDS Church and the earliest to use musical notation along with the words," Sanders says. "In addition to being one of the earliest hymnals of the LDS Church, it's also one of the rarest ones."