JK Rowling Book Sells for $4M

Sotheby’s figured The Tales of Beedle the Bard would fetch about $100,000 at auction—in retrospect, about 40 times too low. The book, a one-of-a-kind piece of the Harry Potter canon hand-written and illustrated by JK Rowling herself, fetched $3.98 million for charity today, Reuters reports. “Christmas has come early for me,” said an ecstatic Rowling.

The tome, a collection of wizard fairy tales, is referenced in the last Potter book, but only one of its five stories is told within the series. Rowling produced just 7 copies of the full volume, each decorated with silver and semi-precious stones. Only one was sold, the rest went to personal friends. Rowling calls the book her “goodbye to the world I loved.” (More Harry Potter stories.)