Speaking of "magic" & perhaps the magic it will take for a true gold rally:
Harry Potter in the Money with Coin Fans
September 06, 2001 08:21 AM ET
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Reuters Photo
By Paul Majendie
LONDON (Reuters) - Harry Potter is in the money -- and Queen Elizabeth approves. The teenage wizard has cast a spell over his fans -- more than 25,000 Harry Potter coins sold out in under five hours.
It was billed as the world's first official legal tender coin based on the JK Rowling books, which have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. The first Potter film comes out in November.
"It has gone manic here. People are going crazy buying them. We sold more than 25,000 in five hours on Wednesday," Taya Pobjoy, managing director of Pobjoy Mint, told Reuters on Thursday.
On one side, the gold, silver and cupro nickel coins feature Harry casting a magic spell. On the other, there is an image of the British monarch, who had to give clearance for the sale.
The coins are legal tender on Britain's Isle of Man but their main attraction is as a collector's item.
Pobjoy, who runs what is billed as Europe's largest private mint, got the idea for the coin when reading the first Potter book in which the teenage wizard goes to a magic bank and withdraws coins left to him by his parents. "When I heard the movie was coming out, I thought what a wonderful idea it would be to make wizard money. So I approached the (local) government on the Isle of Man and they are very pro-filming.
"They asked me to come up with designs and we worked with Warner Brothers, who licensed us. They were sent to Buckingham Palace for approval as her majesty has to give the go-ahead for any images of her," she said.
The bespectacled Harry, a quaint boarding-school throwback in the era of PlayStation and Pokemon, has been hailed for singlehandedly teaching a whole new generation of children the joys of reading in an electronic age of short attention spans.
The publishing industry has been astonished by the universality of the books written by a single mother in an Edinburgh cafe in between school runs.
The stories have topped best-seller lists around the world from Argentina to China and have been translated into 42 languages from Albanian to Zulu.
The release of the first Potter movie in November is certain to stir even more Pottermania worldwide.
reuters.com |
