Nine hundred pounds is not the sort of price tag you normally expect to see in a charity shop.

But on July 2 an Oxfam shop in Station Road, Edgware, sold a rare first edition book for just that amount making it the store's biggest ever sale.

Book adviser and Oxfam volunteer Cedric Isaac said: "It's the biggest single sale we've ever made. We have a reputation people know they can give us these books and we won't sell them for £1.99," he said.

The book in question a two volume first edition of 'Northwest Passage', by Roald Amundsen, published in 1908 was bought by a book enthusiast from Manchester.

The same customer also bought a copy of 'Under the Polar Star', an account of an Oxford University expedition to the Arctic, published in 1937 for £100, bringing the total sale to £1,000.

And this sale could yet be dwarfed: Mr Isaac reckons a set of 12 leather-bound antiquarian books he received last week, which date from 1645 to 1794, could fetch up to £1,600.

Mr Isaac advertises the rare books which are sold via the shop in a specialist book magazine and they are not kept on site.

"We can't expect the Edgware public to buy £900 books they would probably wait for the price to come down. I am more likely to raise the price," said Mr Isaac.

The editions of 'Northwest Passage' and 'Under the Pole' were part of a family collection spanning 80 years that were donated to the shop and, according to Mr Isaac, there are still a few gems left to snap up.

And these sales are not isolated incidents according to Murray Winters, Oxfam's business development manager, the charity is now the country's biggest second hand book dealer.

"It's fantastic. Last year, we sold £11million of second hand books," he said.

July 8, 2002 16:30