Would you pay $55,000 for Harry Potter?
How about $41,000? Last May one of the only 500 first editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Sorcerer’s for us Americans) sold for $55,000. This week another sold for $41,000. But, seeing as there are only 500 in existence, and many of those apparently went to libraries to be torn up from cover to cover by snot nosed kids eating purple popsicles, perfect copies (the $41,000 is also signed by JK Rowling) are getting to be almost as rare as Honus Wagners. Well, probably not quite there, but you see the parallel. After Harry made his trip to the Americas, the days of 500 copies were well over, the last installment of the series has sold over 400 million copies, in 64 different languages. JK Rowling is a billionaire. Second richest woman in the world, behind Oprah. And whereas Oprah only makes a monthly hobby of getting people to read who would normally just be watching daytime TV, Rowling’s spent the last decade plus getting people who would normally be watching Pokemon or Spongebob to reading long novels that will hopefully segue into other reading. Tip of the hat to both. Here’s more about the $41,000 book from YahooNews.