I remember first seeing it in the late 80's at a friend's party. I was fascinated instantly!! He said he'd been deciphering the page numbering system. I had to find a copy. But I couldn't. THen I saw one for $250 at Moe's books in Berkeley. At the time I couldn't afford that. Later, Franco Maria Ricci (the original Italian publisher) began to reprint them so I bought one and had it shipped here. At the time (ca. 1992), he was printing three different editions. Spanish, French and Italian. It doesn't really matter which you get since only the brief introduction is in a "known" language. It's evidently still available from him (his other publications seem very interesting as well) but you have to navigate through a bit of Italian. As far as I can tell, there are no American distributors of his books.

Anyway, I've spent a lot of time with this book, and some time trying to find Mr. Serafini, and it's all still as mysterious as it was 15 years ago.

I bought mine through an Italian bookshop online a few years ago.

If you can decipher Italian, it costs about US$250, plus about $50 for
shipping. Not cheap, but it's a worthy book to have.

www.internetbookshop.it/ was the site, but now searches don't
show the book. It might still be out there though.

In Jr. High school my art teacher thought I might like to see it for whatever reason... she brought it in and I spend hours looking through it. Only recently did I have another chance to flip through it when I found out that the local University has a copy in it's special archives. All in all I've had maybe 5 hours with this book. Without a doubt one day I will have a copy on my shelf. Even in that brief time it has had an unbelievable impact on my life.

My good friend Francesco kept telling me that it was his passion in life to obtain a copy because it was the greatest piece of art of the 20th century in his opinion. Years later he purchased a copy and after one look I started my search for a copy. Good old e-bay... yes! If anyone is interested Moes up in the bay area had one last time I looked. Very cool indeed. Steve

a more detailed version of my story: i was travelling in ecuador, taking buses toward the coast, and I ended up in a fishing village called puerto lopez. it was a nice, laid back place, and the hostel i stayed in was across the (dirt) road from the beach... very relaxing. most of the hostels there have book exchanges with beat up old books in them, and i saw this big text-book looking thing on the shelf and pulled it out for a look. it was the abbeville press edition without the dustjacket, and it was in a pretty sorry state- torn pages taped back together with scotch tape, loose binding, etc. anyway, i was totally enthralled, and decided i absolutely had to own one. that was only a couple months ago, and i finally caved and bought mine from a french webstore. it's the FMR edition from 1993. i had a chance to buy the abbeville edition on ebay recently, but for some reason i wanted the FMR one more, even though it is less valuable. anyway, that's my story... and according to FedEx, i should have it thursday!!!

I first found out about the Codex reading Douglas Hofstadter's "Goedel Escher Bach" back around 1980. He has a whole chapter and several references to the Codex. Hofstadter's book examines whether "words and thoughts follow formal rules". One can easily see how the Codex plays into that theme. While I do not have a copy of the Codex, I have seen several reproduced pages. At some point in my life I do intend to purchase a copy.

I used to work at the Library of Congress as a researcher and came across it by accident. I had the first american edition by the Abbeville Press checked out for years on internal loan in the early 90's. I was always surprised that no one else requested the codex, though the Library may have had more than one copy. I received my own copy summer 2007 as birthday present. It's the Numbered Limited & Signed French language Edition from 1993.

i heard mention of the voynich manuscript one day as i was watching the history channel so i decided to google it and learn more about it. i wound up on wikipedia and found in the related article section the Codex seraphinianus. i had a look at the article and didnt really care much for it at first until i saw photos of it which really got my attention. i tried finding copies of it on the internet and the first ones i found cost from 500 to 5000 dollars so i thought it would be way out of my price range until i found the 2006 rizzoli version on the italian site internetbookshop. it cost around 96 euros and just arrived a few days ago and i have been engrossed in it ever since.