A rare first edition of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, the book that introduced 007 to the world, has fetched £19,000 at an auction in South Cerney, Gloucestershire.
The 1953 book, which sold for £4,000 more than expected, was the top lot at a sale at which Live and Let Die — the second Bond novel — went for £6,600, reports the BBC. A copy of Moonraker, the third in the series, sold for £7,200.
Meanwhile a copy of US comic Detective from May 1939, featuring Batman’s first appearance, sold for £24,000.
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 a signed copy of From Russia With Love fetched at Bloomsbury Auctions in London in 2004. —ANI