A collector’s family were surprised to get £10,500, or almost CAD$17,945, for a Harry Potter book that cost just 30p when bought.
The craze surrounding the British magician has not abated over the years, as the results of this online auction in the small English town of Lichefield show, the BBC reported on Tuesday.
A Los Angeles buyer has snagged a rare first edition copy of The Philosopher’s Stone, the first book in the 1997 saga.
Only 500 copies of this edition were produced. Almost 300 of these were sent to libraries. By purchasing the book from the Wolverhampton library, the late collector made a real bargain.
However, the story could have taken a very different turn, as the family thought they had lost their job when they moved. All of the collector’s books ended up in “hundreds of boxes,” according to his sister.
“We knew he had gotten the book, but when we asked him if we could find it, he couldn’t find it,” she told the BBC.