Record price after competitive bidding Fan pays 1.9 million dollars for the first Harry Potter drawing

A first edition of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was recently auctioned off for 51,272 francs. However, the original drawing for the first volume has now broken all previous auction records for the fantasy series.

The original drawing for the first Harry Potter book was auctioned off in New York for a record sum of 1.9 million dollars (around 1.71 million Swiss francs).

The watercolor drawing by British artist Thomas Taylor on the English first edition of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is now "the most valuable Harry Potter object ever sold at auction", the auction house Sotheby's declared on Wednesday.

Four bidders had competed for the work online and on the phone for around ten minutes before it was sold to applause, it added. The auction house had expected bids of 400,000 to 600,000 dollars.

When Taylor drew the iconic image of Harry Potter in 1997, he was just 23 years old. The young artist was working in a children's bookshop in Cambridge, England, when he was commissioned by Bloomsbury publisher Barry Cunningham to draw the picture for J.K. Rowling's forthcoming book about the young wizard with the round glasses and lightning bolt scar on his forehead.

Today he writes and illustrates his own stories, Taylor explained according to Sotheby's. However, he is "proud to look back on these magical beginnings".

First edition of only 500 copies

Taylor was one of the first readers of the book at the time - according to Sotheby's book specialist Kalika Sands, he received one of the first copies of the manuscript, which he used as a model for his paintings. He therefore knew the Harry Potter world "before anyone else", Sands told the AFP news agency. He was therefore completely free in his imagination of the young wizard.

Rowling and Taylor were still completely unknown when the book was published. Nobody had expected the books to be such a worldwide success when the first volume was published. According to Sotheby's, only 500 copies of the first edition were printed. 300 of them were distributed to libraries.

The first "Harry Potter" volume was published on June 26, 1997. To date, the seven volumes have sold more than 500 million copies around the world and have been translated into 80 languages. The novels have been adapted into eight films, which have grossed around 6.5 billion euros (around 6.25 billion Swiss francs) at the global box office.