Check your book shelf
Rare first edition copies of The Goblet of Fire, The Order of the Phoenix, and The Half Blood Prince can net you £60,000 a book.
Get into the attic, comb the book shelf. If you were in on Potter early, you might sitting on a small galleons fortune. Philip J. Errington, JK biography author, explains that the first few books regularly appear at auction, and sell for thousands of pounds if they’re in good condition.
You want a first edition, especially one with an error in it. As such, the most valuable book going is the original: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with cover art showing Harry standing in front of a train.
Here’s what you need to check for:
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
- Hardcover, published in 1997.
- The print line (the series of numbers of the copyright page) must read “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1”
- The author is credited as “Joanne Rowling”, not JK
- A printing error on page 53 which lists the words “1 wand” twice
Last year a first-edition copy of The Philosopher’s Stone sold for a world-record £60,000 at auction.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Hardcover first editions published in 1998 can go for £6,000, according to auctioneers Abebooks. Signed deluxe editions fetch £1,000.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- The author is credited as “Joanne Rowling”
- They will have the number line “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1” and a block of wrongly aligned text on page seven.
First edition prints can go for £8,000, if they’re in perfect condition.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- An author’s signature will push the value of the book higher
- Original watercolour illustrations by Giles Greenfield
If you’ve got both of the above, you might get more than £2,000 at auction.
