Original Harry Potter cover sells for $1.9 million, setting auction record

CNN
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The original first edition illustration of JK Rowling's 1997 novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has sold for a record $1.9 million.

It was expected to sell for as much as $600,000 – the highest pre-sale value ever placed for a Harry Potter-related item, according to auction house Sothebys – but the hammer fell through. more than three times that amount.

Sothebys said it took nearly 10 minutes for the four-way auction to conclude in New York on Wednesday.

The watercolor cover art was created by author and illustrator Thomas Taylor.

The image features the young wizard Harry Potter with his signature dark brown hair, round glasses and lightning bolt scar, ready to board the Hogwarts Express train for his first trip to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Taylor's cover was used for several translated versions of the book, the auction house said. However, it was not used for the American edition of the book, which was published under the title Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

When the illustration was first auctioned at Sothebys in London in 2001, it sold for about four times its estimated sale price, for a record 85,750 (about $106,000), according to a Sothebys press release published before the sale.

The record for an item related to the book series was previously held by an unsigned first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which sold for $421,000 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, in 2021, according to Sothebys.

Taylor, then just 23, created the original cover image in two days, according to Sothebys.

At the time of the book's publication, Taylor worked in a bookstore, where his colleagues informed customers that their local bookseller was the illustrator of the best-selling novel, Sothebys said.

The illustration was auctioned Wednesday at Sothebys in New York along with other works of English and American literature.

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