NEW YORK: A chair J.K. Rowling used to write the first two volumes of her best-selling Harry Potter series is set to sell at auction in New York on Wednesday.

Pre-auction bidding via the Internet had reached $65,000 on Monday for the modest 1930s-era oak chair on which Rowling, 50, sat while writing “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” published in Britain in 1997, and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (1998), the first two of seven volumes.

Rowling received the chair — one of a mismatched set of four — free when she was a young single mother living in subsidized housing in the Scottish city of Edinburgh.

“This was the comfiest one, which is why it ended up stationed permanently in front of my typewriter, supporting me while I typed,” Rowling wrote in a letter accompanying the chair, the auction house conducting the sale, Heritage Auctions, wrote on its website.

“My nostalgic side is quite sad to see it go, but my back isn’t,” she added.