The London Evening Standard’s Business

The London Evening Standard’s Business Day has this article about Harry Potter being at, of all places, an Antiquarian Book Fair:

HARRY Potter finds himself in the strangest of places, but an antiquarian book fair? I ask you!

His first adventure, Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, was published three years ago. Yet there he is at the Antiquarian Book Fair, which opens at Olympia 2 on Thursday, 7 June, and runs until Sunday, 10 June.

There will be more than 150 members of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association from Britain, the US and Europe selling direct to the public. It is ‘classic first-time author syndrome’ that puts Potter in the same fine book class as other exhibits, says Adrian Harrington of London’s Adrian Harrington Rare Books and ABA chairman.

‘Only 300 copies of the first edition were printed for sale, over and above the 200 proof copies for review – and many of those were sold to school libraries where the kids, bless them, thumbed them to bits.’

Hence Harrington is asking Pounds 15,000 for one pristine Harry Potter that three years ago was worth Pounds 7.95.

However, that is below the Pounds 465,000 asking price for a 1623 Shakespeare First Folio from American dealer Heritage Book Shop (would be more, but some pages missing), yet a cut above An Essay on the Origin and Operation of Dry Rot from 1811 (Pounds 750 from Michael Phelps).

And, of course, Elvis lives at the fair.

Heritage is asking Pounds 32,500 for a manuscript, signed by the King, of You Don’t Know Me, a song he wrote while serving with the US Army in Germany.

It was released in 1967 as the flipside of Big Boss Man.