Cricket books fetch $17k

Editions of the first four Wisden Cricketers' Almanacks that were left in a pile in a charity shop sold at auction yesterday for more than £8000 ($17,000).

The four volumes, from 1864-1867, had been bound up into one and were dropped off into an Oxfam shop in Hertford, north of London.

But manager Pauline Wilby realised what they were and had them rebound as four books before passing them on to auctioneers Bonhams in Oxford.