When the first 500 copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone were printed they came with a few errors that had got past the editors. On the equipment list in the chapter ‘Diagon Alley’ the word wand appears twice, on the back cover Philosopher’s is misspelled and there are one of two other small errors too.
No one knows how many of the 500 original copies are still in circulation but every now and then one comes up for sale and they always sell incredibly well!
This week a copy from this exact print run, also including a signed plate from J. K Rowling herself went up for auction at Bonhams auction house, Knightbridge and it reached £68,800, proving Pottermania is far from over!
The book originally belonged to a private collector and is signed to the children of the family by J. K Rowling. They handed the book onto a charity in 2003 and it’s that charity that have now sold the book at auction.
After frenzied bidding on the rare edition it was left to two bidders in the end, one on the telephone and one placing bids online before the copy was finally sold for £68,800.
While millions of copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone have been now published, the errors were in the original first print run. This run consisted of 500 books as the publishers were not sure the books would be popular with children. If you want to know if you have a copy from this run, check for the errors yourself because you could be sitting on a rare valuable copy.
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