Bond novel sale brings in a pretty Moneypenny

Published on Thursday 12 November 2009 21:22

A CHARITY shop has sold a James Bond book for £3,000 after it was handed in buried in a black bin bag, it has been revealed.

A first edition of Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die, which had been handed in at Oxfam's Morningside branch in Edinburgh, was originally estimated to be worth around 800 but sold for more than four times that amount at Bonhams Auction House in Oxford.

Staff discovered the book among other donations in the black bin bag, and were delighted with the amount raised.

Oxfam Morningside bookshop manager Andy Crosby said: "Everyone at the shop was eager to see how much the book would be auctioned for. I didn't think it would raise so much money and I am thrilled that it did.

"It is not every day you manage to raise such an amount from the sale of one book, and the money will help to make a real difference to Oxfam's programmes."

Oxfam said it could spend the money on setting up and maintaining a water supply for 3,800 people, feeding 500 families emergency rations, building two classrooms, training 50 farmers or building 70 toilets.

Meanwhile, a bottle of whisky is expected to fetch 20,000 at auction in Edinburgh next week. The Dalmore Oculus is the first and last of its kind, blended from some of the most exceptional whiskies of the past 140 years.

Bonhams, which will sell a Baccarat crystal decanter of the blend at its Edinburgh auction rooms on Wednesday described it as "one of the most precious whiskies to appear at auction".

The oldest whisky in the blend is a rich spicy and orange zest core distilled in 1951. Other rare malts selected from vintages distilled in 1868, 1878, 1922, 1926 and 1939 add a depth of flavour.