If Your Copy Of Harry Potter Has This Typo, You Could Be A Whole Lot Richer Soon

Everyone knows that a first edition book can make you a lot of money, as they are pretty rare to find for popular books. First editions can also contain slightly different text from copies that came from later editions. If you are the lucky owner of this Harry Potter first edition, then you could be seeing some serious dough soon.

In J.K. Rowling’s first novel of the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, (British edition) there is an error on page 53. This page details which supplies Harry needs to bring to Hogwarts for his first year of study. However, if you have the rare version, the line “1 wand” is actually stated twice on the list. Now, this might seem like a small error, but it is actually a terrific mistake to find in your first edition.

The book that includes the misprinted words turns out to be extremely valuable, and one estimate puts its resale worth around $33,000. You read that right — $33,000 USD! This is one of the only mistakes published in the entire series, and you’ll sure get paid for your messed up copy.

The hard cover version of this book was released in 1997 in England and the ones in question have to be the hard cover versions. There are no misprints in the paper backs. Also, the most valuable of these typo books has a number sequence of  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 on the title page of the book.

Sadly, the likelihood of you owning one of these particular books is incredibly slim. There are currently only 500 of these copies and they would most likely be in the hands of the British. There are no mistakes in current versions of the American title, which is Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. Sorry, USA!

Other first edition books have also sold for some seriously big bucks. A rare first edition of Alice in Wonderland, which was only one out of 22 copies, is going to be sold for a historic price somewhere in the neighborhood two to three million dollars USD. This is because after these copies were released, Lewis Carroll decided to change the concept of the illustrations. These 22 copies still have the original illustrations that were first intended.

However, the Harry Potter book, like the Alice in Wonderland story, won’t sell at any auction if the book isn’t in good condition. This shows that in order to claim any type of money, you have to show some love for your books.

The auctioneers who are selling the Harry Potter first edition state that the price for the book is also so steep due to the love and admiration that the Harry Potter series has received through out the years.

They state, “As the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has a special place in the affections of the millions of readers across the world and the proof reading error about the wand in the first edition has, of course, become a treasured piece of Harry Potter arcana.”