Rare first edition of James Bond sells for 19K pounds

LONDON - A rare first edition of Ian Fleming’s ‘Casino Royale’, the book that introduced 007 to the world, has fetched 19,000 pounds at an auction in South Cerney, Gloucestershire.

The 1953 book, which sold for 4,000 pounds more than expected, was the top lot at a sale at which ‘Live and Let Die’ - the second Bond novel - went for 6,600 pounds, reports the BBC.

A copy of ‘Moonraker’, the third in the series, sold for 7,200 pounds.

Meanwhile a copy of US comic ‘Detective’ from May 1939, featuring Batman’s first appearance, sold for 24,000 pounds.

Auctioneer Dominic Winter said ‘the strikingly colourful’ Bond first editions had ‘always been one of the surest certainties over the last 30 years’.

“The 007 film industry has helped that impetus by drawing in thousands of new fans keen to buy into the James Bond fantasy,” he said.

It is thought the highest price for a Bond first edition was the 22,750 pounds a signed copy of ‘From Russia With Love’ fetched at Bloomsbury Auctions in London in 2004.

A signed first edition of ‘Casino Royale’ is believed to have sold for 21,000 pounds, also at Bloomsbury, the following year.

At Thursday’s auction, an original poster from the 1963 film version of ‘From Russia With Love’ sold for 2,800 pounds.

Other items included a 1961 first edition of John le Carre’s first book, ‘Call for the Dead’, which sold for 3,800 pounds.

A collection of books, proofs, letters and notes by the novelist Iris Murdoch sold for the same price.

Other first editions that sold on Thursday included an early Batman comic from 1940 that went for 9,500 pounds.

An original edition of the Superman comic, published in 1939, sold for 9,000 pounds. (ANI)