The Tales of Beedle the Bard
This is not the next post in the Chain Link saga, but I had to comment.
The (living) author J.K. Rowling hand-wrote and illustrated seven copies of the book The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which is referenced as a fictional book in one of her Harry Potter stories. Each copy is magnificently bound, with deckle edges, Moroccan leather, and sterling silver.
All proceeds go to charity. Good for her.
Amazon bought one for £1 950 000 at Sotheby’s, which presumably does not include a buyer’s premium.
Um, yeah. A couple years ago, at least (when I was still following prices), you could buy a Gutenberg Bible and a Birds of North America for less money. Save up a few more pennies, and you could walk away with a First Folio Shakespeare. If you like children’s literature, you could probably buy every hand-written and -illustrated Beatrix Potter and Lewis Carroll volume and letter in existence for less.
What do you think will have more enduring value?
Email subscription
January 24th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Or you could do something useful with it, and buy 188,988 hits of ecstasy (assuming that you paid normal per-pill street value, but I’m pretty sure that I could get a price break to purchase an even 200,000).
Or, I dunno, you could feed a bunch of starving people or something. Really, though, we need to look more closely at the MDMA option.