Rare Books Stolen From UK Bookshop

A rare Harry Potter book worth of £40,000 ($55,000) has been stolen from a bookshop in Norfolk, England, as well as first editions of ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and ‘The Hobbit’.

In a midnight raid on Thetford’s SN Books, two men carried away some of the shop’s most valuable stock, including a copy of Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ bearing the author’s thumbprint, and a signed first edition of ‘The Color of Magic’, the first book in Terry Pratchett’s popular Discworld series, The Telegraph reported.

“These books are very rare and in some cases unique and not the sort of thing you see every day,” said Thetford Police Constable Gideon Weigelt-Holmes. “I am urging people, especially book dealers or those working in specialist book shops, to be vigilant in case they are offered for sale.”

A first edition copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is the most valuable book to have disappeared in the burglary. Only 500 copies were printed by Bloomsbury for the book’s first run in 1997, with 300 sent to libraries.

Special editions of JK Rowling’s books have fetched high prices in recent years. Last year, two first editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone were put on sale for a combined price of £10,000, while one of seven illustrated copies of her ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’ sold at Sotheby’s for £368,750 in 2016. Last month, a miniature one-off manuscript with drawings from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ was valued at £120,000.