The Original Harry Potter Cover Art That A 23-Year-Old Made For $750 Back In 1997 Just Sold For $1.92 Million

Happy 27th birthday to the first ever Harry Potter book! And happy $1.92 MILLION to whoever just sold this piece of artwork. Sheeesh.

So one thing I don't believe I've ever disclosed on the blog is that I'm a big Harry Potter guy. Kinda nerdy, but then again, I was a 7th grade English teacher. The movies are okay, but I think I've read the books all the way through probably 10x each....? Was the type of loser to go get them at midnight when I was growing up, too. Whatever, I liked them. Anyways, my first school allowed me to teach whatever I wanted (no rules, it was AWESOME), so we read the Sorcerer's Stone in the first grading period, Chamber of Secrets in the second grading period, Prisoner of Azkaban in the third grading period, and then the Goblet of Fire in the fourth grading period. And guess what? The library had to order more copies of books 5 through 7 because the demand was so high of kids that wanted to continue to read OVER THE SUMMER. I'll get off this teaching pedestal here in a second, but how many kids do you know begging to read over the summer? It's because we force them to read boring, lame shit instead of what they want. Teach a love of reading and they'll read. Teach them that reading sucks and they'll avoid it. Pretty simple......

Okay, back to the story at hand, which is that this original cover art for the first book, made before the release in 1997, just sold for $1.92 MILLION. For reference: the previous record for a Harry Potter item was a first edition copy of the book that sold for $471K back in 2001. But the way this story goes is that a guy by the name of Thomas Taylor, who was a 23 year old art school graduate, made this cover for a flat fee of $750. Since Harry Potter wasn't expected to be anything special (being denied by a dozen publishing companies), only 500 copies were made to begin with. Fast forward to today and 600 million copies have been sold.....

Now it must be noted that Taylor did get to sell this original piece of artwork for over $100,000 in 2001, so it's not like he didn't get anything for it. But someone just turned around and sold it for nearly TWO MILLION DOLLARS. Listen, I'm as big of a Harry Potter fan as the next guy, but who the fuck is paying for that? Give me a house near the ocean and a fresh new set of the book series to read on the beach and that's how I'd spend my $2,000,000. But I'm assuming this person already has both of those, and this was just another drop in the bucket to hang on the wall in their third vacation home. Some people have way too much money on their hands.....