Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.
Many ('a considerable number') of them also which used curious arts, х ta (G3588) perierga (G4021) praxantoon (G4238)] - 'who had practiced the magic arts.' The word signifies 'things overdone,' and is here significantly applied to arts in which laborious but senseless incantations were practiced.
Brought their books together (containing the mystic formularies), and burned them before all - the imperfect tense graphically expressing the progress and continuance of the conflagration. These miserable dupes of magicians, and other pretended traffickers with invisible powers, having got their eyes opened, now come forward openly acknowledging how shamefully they had been deluded, and how deeply they had allowed themselves to be implicated in such practices.
And they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver - about 2,000 British pounds sterling, supposing it to be the drachma, the current coin of the Levant. the value of which was about tenpence sterling. From their nature, those books would be costly; and books in general then bore a higher value than now.
While Paul is preparing to leave for Macedonia and Achaia, the idol-makers of Ephesus, whose craft was suffering through the success of the Gospel, raise a tumult in the city, which is with difficulty quelled by the civil authorities (19:21-41)