Posted on Wednesday 27 June 2007
A rare first edition of a Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone
book exceeded pre-sale estimates by as much as £4, 000, when it was sold at Bonhams' Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Photographs Sale in London for £9, 000.
The epic tale of the boy wizard Harry Potter, which has sold over 325 million copies world wide, begun in 1994, in a cafe in Edinburgh, at which time J. K. Rowling was unemployed and living on state benefits.
The book was one of only 500 published by Bloomsbury in 1997, who at the time advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children’s books. The year before, in 1996, the book had been shown to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected it.
Bonhams sold the hardback on behalf of a woman who had bought it with some book tokens she won as a school prize.
Last week a student sold his first edition of The Philosopher's Stone, the first book in the Harry Potter septology,for £7,200 at auction. Toby Rundle, age 19, from Somerset, auctioned his hardback copy in order to fund his university degree.