If we’re gonna go to the trouble of making this, why not just sell it?
I’ve got a few reasons.
I think it’s too risky, and even if we did manage to sell it, I don’t think we’d make much. This is a book that’s known for how hard it was to sell. The Voyniches themselves tried to do so for decades–the last time it did sell, it was because the buyer was a family friend who wanted to sell it for more.
If you price it how it’s worth, you’re never going to find a buyer, because it’s not an investment piece. It’s a very niche interest that takes a very niche person, and I don’t want to wait around for the rest of my life to find that person.
Then there’s the fact that just about any one person or institution with Voynich money would also have the money to get it tested. We can match the ink materials and parchment date all we want, which I am doing, but if someone comes along wanting to look at the radiation levels in the inks, we’re screwed. The best way to keep this from happening is to control how and when it enters other peoples’ hands. If we want that control, we have to keep it.
Plus, I can’t lie, I like the attention.