The cover price of the first edition of The Great Gatsby was $2.00.
Charles Scribner’s Sons priced the 1925 hardcover edition at two dollars, with the amount printed on the inside front flap of the original dust jacket. That price applied to the book as a new release, not to the value of surviving copies today. First editions with their original jackets can now command extraordinarily high prices because of rarity and condition.
The $2.00 price is also useful to book collectors identifying an authentic first-edition dust jacket. Other clues include the dark green cloth binding, specific printing errors, and the jacket’s distinctive “Celestial Eyes” artwork by Francis Cugat.
The book’s original price is easy to confuse with modern resale values or with the price of later paperback editions. Fitzgerald himself did not receive a fortune from the novel at first: early sales were disappointing, and the book’s major commercial success came decades later.