Almost three years ago I wrote in Matching NIV Study Bibles – 30 Years Apart about buying Caroline an NIV Study Bible to match the one I purchased in 1992. Those are the Bibles we still use during our homeschool time.

Mine has continued to decline and I was faced with two choices. Either pay to get it professionally rebound (which isn’t cheap) or buy another Bible. I have several Bibles of various kinds, but I really like my old NIV. I know where everything is, it’s very readable, etc. Plus it is the one that I use with Caroline. I liked the idea of having the same Bible but fresh and with no notes or markings. It felt like it would be the best of both worlds. Familiar yet new.

So for Christmas I asked David and Caroline to buy me a new Bible. They purchased one on eBay that was in Louisiana. It is a little bit older than mine (1990 versus 1992), but it is the same. 

Like Caroline’s, it is pristine. It smells like a new Bible. No marks and I don’t know if anyone ever thumbed though the pages even once. It was priced on the original box with a little hand-written sticker that says $62.95 which was a lot for a Bible in the very early 1990s. Judging by the price tag, it was probably originally purchased from a small local Christian bookstore back when those still existed.

So I have my new vintage NIV Study Bible. I’ll retire my dark green one and use my new dark red and gold copy moving forward.