A lot of things happened in 1997.
Scientists cloned Dolly the Sheep, Princess Diana died and a little book called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone had its first release.
And while we might think more about how that year was the start of a magical book series, one Muggle is now thanking that first run of books for earning them a nice bit of cash.
When Harry Potter was first released, there was only 500 copies made, complete with some typos – including word philosopher being misspelled on the back cover and the author’s name being printed as ‘Joanne Rowling’.
And now one of those first editions of the book has gone up for auction, selling for over $126,000 Australian dollars at auction house Bonhams.
But before you go scrambling to your bookshelf to see if you might be able to cash in, there’s a catch!
This copy was originally owned by the author’s first literary agent Christopher Little, and was signed by J.K. Rowling ahead of the auction!
But what makes this sale even more rare is that more than half of the first 500 books ended up in libraries. Which is a drop in the ocean to the 500 million Harry Potter books that have now been sold worldwide.
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