A book by a muggle-loving writer has just become priceless in the Muggle world: The Tales of Beedle the Bard has just sold at auction for 75,000 gold wizard galleons.
Muggles do a lot of strange things, but this one might take the pumpkin pasty. At Sotheby’s auction house in London, a muggle bought a bejeweled, hand-written copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard for 75,000 galleons, proving that maybe even the most random of childhood stories are worth something after all.
Before the rest of the world believed in the story telling prowess of J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series, publisher Barry Cunningham took a chance on what Rowling describes as “an overlong novel about a boy wizard in glasses” in an inscription.
The inscription is set inside a leather-bound and bejeweled, hand-written and illustrated, 6,000-word copy of Beedle the Bard, made specially for Cunningham by Rowling herself. The copy is one of six in existence given as gifts to a small group of people who were involved in making Harry Potter a worldwide phenomenon. Another copy, specifically created by Rowling for auction, sold for £1.95 million in 2007.
Cunningham’s copy went up for auction and sold for almost £370,000 (£368,750, to be exact), which translates to about 75,000 galleons (ʛ) in the wizarding world. That’s a lot of school books for Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the rest of the Hogwarts gang.
The special edition of 'Beetle the Bard' was handwritten by J.K. Rowling, and is bound in brown morocco leather and adorned with semi-precious stones.
The Weasleys and other traditional wizard families grew up with The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a collection of wizard-centric stories similar to muggle fairy tales. They include such classics as “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot” and “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” as well as the “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” which features the infamous Deathly Hallows.
No doubt, Arthur Weasley would be fascinated by this muggle rendition of a beloved wizard children’s book, and the Malfoys would be outraged (while secretly coveting such a rare and beautiful thing).
Cunningham made sure to receive Rowling’s blessing before selling the copy, and has promised to donate some of the profits to her children’s charity, Lumos.
