Harry Potter first edition bought for £10 sells for £55k - how to tell if you have a copy worth this much

A rare Harry Potter first edition snapped up for £10 after being spotted in a bargain bucket has sold for more than £55,000 at auction. The hardback copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone came from the first print run destined for bookshops in 1997.

A mum on a caravan holiday in the late 1990s spotted it for sale for £12 in a bargain bucket in a bookshop in the Scottish highlands. Because it had no jacket, the buyer haggled for a £2 discount before she gave it to her children to read.

And although they are rare, your copy of the Harry Potter book from the late 1990s could be worth a fortune too. Here's how to tell if yours is a first edition in either hard or soft cover:

• The publisher must be listed as Bloomsbury at the bottom of the title page
• The latest date listed in the copyright information must be 1997
• The print line on the copyright page must read “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1”, ten down to one, exactly. The lowest figure in the print line indicates the printing
• On page 53, in the list of school supplies that Harry receives from Hogwarts, the item “1 wand” must appear twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. The mistake was subsequently corrected in the second printing of the book
• On the back cover, there is a typo as there is a missing “o” in “Philospher’s Stone”

The first print run of the famous book featured only 500 hardback copies which are considered the rarest and most prized Potter books.

The recently sold perfectly preserved book was taken back to the woman’s home and left in a cupboard under the stairs for years before it was found and valued. It turned out to be one of the first copies published and was one of only 200 distributed to bookshops from the first print run.

It was expected to fetch around £40,000 but sold for a total of £55,104, including the buyer’s premium, at Hansons Auctioneers on December 11. The seller, a 58-year-old Scottish woman, said she bought the book after reading one of the first-ever interviews with JK Rowling in The Scotsman newspaper in the late 1990s.

The retired third sector manager said: “I bought the Harry Potter book before anyone really knew much about it, or the author. I found it during a family caravan trip touring around the highlands of Scotland.

“I was delighted to discover a bookshop café on an isolated peninsula after driving miles on a single-track road in the north-west of Scotland. I recognised the distinctive book cover straight away. The bookseller had placed it in a wicker ‘bargain bucket’ basket on the floor.

“Because it had no dust jacket, I got a couple of pounds knocked off the price. Our two children enjoyed the wizard tale as a bedtime story all through that holiday in 1997."

Book expert Jim Spencer, of Hansons Auctioneers, said: “These first issues are getting harder and harder to find. This must be one of the few remaining copies that’s been in private hands since it was purchased in 1997. It’s a genuine, honest copy - and a fantastically well-preserved example. This hasn’t been paraded around salerooms or rare book fairs or been restored. Of the 500 first issue hardbacks printed, 300 went to schools and libraries in order to reach a bigger audience. This is one of the even scarcer 200 that went to bookshops."