The joy of buying music

Buying music always feels like an essential luxury, if such a statement isn't a contradiction in terms. Somehow I always want to own it rather than hire or borrow it. The latest acquisition is a facsimile score of Handel's Jephtha, a thing of great beauty. Handel's original manuscript is available on IMSLP, but it's pretty impossible to read. He made so many corrections and changes. The original manuscript does however have the famous words scrawled in 'How Dark O Lord are thy Decrees' (which roughly translates as 'stopped owing to poor sight') which the Randall copy from later in the 18th century lacks. Handel was actually losing his sight at this point.