A young London girl got the surprise of her life when she found a very rare version of a Harry Potter book in her school library. Emily Saiban stumbled upon the first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Wimbledon Library and she knew just what to do to investigate its authenticity.
Emily is an avid subscriber to YouTube channel, SuperCarlinBrothers, a channel with over 2 million subscribers and focuses their content on Harry Potter fandoms, as well as Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. It was here she learned how to look at a book and check to see if it is of any historical value.
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The local paper, The Richmond & Twickenham Times, reported Emily recalling her experience: "The first thing I noticed was a younger Dumbledore on the back cover” she explained. “Then, I looked on page 53 to see if wand was listed twice on Harry’s school equipment list.” Among other errors, the first print described Hogwarts as a school of “Wizardly and Witchcraft” on the blurb, as well as spelling "Philosopher's" as "Philospher's." Finally, “I saw that the numbers on the copyright read ‘10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1’ and the author's name was indicated as ‘Joanne Rowling’ instead of JK Rowling."
There were only 500 copies of the original copy printed, one of which went for £46,000, which is about $60,000. The book Emily found has been verified by head librarian Paul McDermott and has been in the library's possession for 21 years. Wimbledon Library hasn't decided, as yet, what to do with the book, but they promise more information will be revealed in mid-December.