NORFOLK, Va. — Imagine this: you’re a teenager in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and you have a research project due soon.
Long before Google or Wikipedia, there was only one thing to turn to…the encyclopedia.
Back then, the Encyclopedia Britannica, one of the most popular versions of the books, sold anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the price 30 years later, but it was the go-to source for information at the time.
The 32-volume set has a long history, dating back more than 250 years in Scotland.
It grew into the definitive resource for all types of information in the world, and by 1990, peak sales reached $650 million.
But the digital age was evolving fast, and over the next 20 years, the Encyclopedia Britannica would die a slow death.
Over a three-year span starting in 1993, revenues dropped 50%, following the release of Microsoft’s CD-ROM encyclopedia, Encarta.
By 2012, the printed set made up only 1% of Encyclopedia Britannica’s sales.
That year, the company announced it would stop printing book sets, and instead focus primarily on its digital presence.
Today, we walk around with everything the Encyclopedia Britannica had to offer, along with all the knowledge in human history, in the palm of our hands.
Smartphones have taken over, and Wikipedia stepped in as the new juggernaut of knowledge.
But if you miss the feeling, and the smell, of that old stack of books, you can find an entire set of the Encyclopedia Britannica on eBay for around $100.