There is no end to the obsession with Harry Potter and the movie franchise collectibles. The cover art for J.K. Rowling’s first book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, just sold for a record amount at an auction. This was the original cover image, a watercolor illustration.
Notably, it has grown to be the most costly item of Harry Potter-related memorabilia ever to be auctioned off.
The sale took place at New York’s Sotheby’s. The novel’s cover art first appeared in the 1997 first edition, which went on to become a major hit and inspire television shows and movies.
As of right moment, the cover image has brought in $1.9 million. It was not an easy bid, since there was an almost ten-minute-long four-way bidding war for the same.
Thomas Taylor, an artist, painted the book’s original cover. It shows Harry Potter waiting for his first Hogwarts Express voyage on Platform 9. Taylor used concentrated watercolors on cold-pressed watercolor paper and a black pencil to finish the painting in about two days. For his artwork, he was given $650.
The Philosopher’s Stone edition copy of Harry Potter is among the other record holders from the Harry Potter globe auctions. It held the record before to this. In 2021, Heritage Auctions in Dallas sold it for $421,000 dollars.
After the sale, Sotheby’s noted that it was the “highest pre-sale estimate ever placed on an item of any Harry Potter-related work.”
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