Rare Hockney print hidden in donated book sells for £41K

Imagine opening a book and finding money inside. What if that "money" was actually worth thousands of dollars? This is exactly what happened at a charity shop recently.

A person donated an old book to a Salvation Army shop. Salvation Army is a charity that helps poor people. The book looked normal. Nobody knew what was inside the pages. Then workers at the shop found something amazing — a signed print by a famous artist named David Hockney. Hockney is a very important British artist. His work is in museums around the world.

The workers called an auction house. An auction house is a place where people buy and sell valuable things. They sold the print to find out how much it was worth. Many collectors wanted to buy it. One anonymous bidder won. Anonymous means nobody knows who they are. They paid £41,000 for the print. That is a huge amount of money for something that was sitting in a used book!

The person who donated the book never knew. They gave it away because they did not want it anymore. They did not check inside carefully. Now the print belongs to someone else. That lucky collector has a beautiful piece of art and an amazing story to tell.

This story makes us think about old things we have at home. Do you have any old books or boxes? What could be hiding inside them? Sometimes treasure is hiding right under our nose. You never know what you might find.

Inspired by reporting from BBC News.