A Study in Scarlet - Suh-weeet!

If I was an oil tycoon, trust fund baby or Mega Millions winner with unlimited financial resources to spend on utterly superfluous curiousities, this would be high up on my list: an 1887 issue of Beeton's Christmas Annual, which contains Arthur Conan Doyle's novella A Study In Scarlet, the first published appearance of Sherlock Homes (my first literary hero). Current market value is a cool $160,000. In case you've never read the story, it's a bit of a Holmes oddity, as vast portions of it consist of backstory (set in Utah amongst the early Mormon settlers) for the London murder which Holmes later investigates. In other words, much of the story doesn't involve Holmes at all. It's a seminal work for Doyle, who tinkers with his new character creation and sets the stage for the more familiar "casebook" Holmes stories which followed.