91Èȱ¬

A rare hardback first edition copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has just fetched a rather handsome sum of money!

The novel sold for an incredible £33,000 at auction.

However, the book's sale price isn't the only magical thing about this story.

This is because the rare novel was actually discovered in a skip! The finding was made by a teacher 12 years ago who had decided to rescue the copy of the first book in the Harry Potter series along with two paperback versions.

All three books were sold during an online auction in Staffordshire, with the paperback copies selling for £3,400 and £3,000 each.

The hardback copy was originally estimated to make between £8,000-£12,000 as it had some damage to its binding. It ended up being sold for almost three times that amount.

The seller, who has decided to stay anonymous, said: "To say I'm pleased is an understatement."

This isn't the first time a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has made big bucks at auction.

A hardback copy of the novel sold for almost £120,000 earlier this year, and another bought for £1 at a car boot sale was expected to sell for up to £20,000.

And the reason for the mega prices? Well, it's because only 500 hardback first editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone were printed when the book first came out back in 1997. Most of these copies ended up in schools and libraries.

This most recent sale makes the book the third copy of a hardback first edition found by auction house Hansons Auctioneers in the last 12 months. The company's book expert Jim Spencer described the Harry Potter books as "the Holy Grail" for collectors.