The books were worth tens of thousands of dollars (sold individually on the second-hand book market, after being carefully catalogued etc.), but nobody interested in buying books happened to be at the auction and the auctioneer set a $1 minimum bid because he didn’t know anything about books and was more interested in disposing of the books than making money from the sale. The auction house could surely get significantly more for their books if they knew the right venue to sell them (somewhere frequented by used booksellers), but I guess it wasn’t worth their trouble to figure out where that might be.
This is sort of like the time I went to a car auction as a kid and some college students bought a lightly used stretch limo in perfect working order for (the minimum bid of) $100.
This is sort of like the time I went to a car auction as a kid and some college students bought a lightly used stretch limo in perfect working order for (the minimum bid of) $100.