Yahoo Finance Independent bookshop is selling rare Harry Potter first editions for combined £107,500
A bookshop is offering two rare Harry Potter first editions for sale — for a whopping £107,500.
The books — an original paperback edition and hardback version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — are believed to be the only two on sale in the whole of the country, with the only other paperback available in the United States.
They are now being sold by St Mary's Books in Stamford, Lincolnshire who are hoping to fetch a six-figure sum for the rare finds.
While the first edition paperback, released in 1997, was once available for £4.99 it is on sale for £12,500.
The hardback edition released at the same time, with only 500 copies printed, has a £95,000 price tag — working out at £426 per page.
The store bought the paperback version at the end of February from a private seller who had kept it in pristine condition in a safe.
The rarer hardback had been sent out to schools but also still remains in good condition despite being read by hundreds of schoolchildren throughout the years.
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Shop owner Marcus Tyers, 40, from Stamford, said: “The hardback is extremely rare and is the sort of book that could have been sitting in your bookcase for a long time.
“The paperback is an interesting one in that it's from the exact same sheets and pages as the hardback as they were printed at the same time.
“The only difference is the hardback was printed 500 times whereas the softback was published 5,000 times."
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He said people often ask him how to identify the books and confirm they are genuine, saying it involves a "lot of quirky things".
“The softback version only came in last week and we brought that from a guy who had brought it first when it came out," he said.
"He had kept it in his safe after he realised the price of it - he didn’t particularly want to part with it but he was doing it for the purposes of doing some work on his house.
“And then the hardback is coming in on Wednesday and is the rarer of the two and the one everyone knows."
He added: “Our store is the only store offering the hardback and paperback in the whole of the UK at the moment.
"There is one in the States but we have got both and for security reasons they are not currently being stored inside the shop to protect them before they are sold.
“We have had the softback before but we’ve never had the pair together at the same time so it’s just really exciting to have them together.”
The store, which first opened in Stamford in 1987, has sold thousands of books over the years including many Harry Potter books.
Tyers said popular books can fetch six-figure sums if they are signed, saying they have "global appeal" and they hope to sell the latest additions to their collection within the next two months.
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