On Thursday, a 40-year-old slice of cake from Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s 1981 wedding was sold for £1,850 ($2,565). According to CNN, the sum was well above the £300-£500 ($416-$693) that Cirencester, England auction house Dominic Winters Auctioneers had expected it would fetch.
“It really seemed to capture a lot of people’s imaginations, and wallets,” auctioneer Chris Albury told the outlet, adding that the 28-ounce piece comes from an official cake sent to royal staff members after the wedding.
Albury said that the cake, which features a horseshoe design and a red, white, blue, and gold coat-of-arms, was well-preserved in plastic wrap in a cake tin. “It’s a good sales pitch for clingfilm,” he said. “It’s an object that’s going to last.”
The cake, which originally was sent to Clarence House staffer Moyra Smith, was first sold at auction in 2008, when it fetched nearly $2000. “When the cake arrived at Clarence House Moyra was told she could have a slice from the top tier to keep for herself,” Albury told Today at the time. “This piece is special because it was from the cake sent to the Queen Mother at Clarence House. Moyra must have been very well thought of by the Royal Family to have been given this slice from the top of the cake.”
Over the last decade, the secondary market for royal wedding cakes has been booming. In 2013, a two-year-old piece of cake from the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was sold for $4,160 to an anonymous buyer. A handful of preserved slices from Charles and Diana’s wedding have also made it to the auction block, including an alcohol-soaked fruitcake in a commemorative box.
But Albury noted that the piece that sold on Thursday is unusual due to its large size. “I’ve not seen anyone else trying to sell anything like this,” he said. “It’s quite a lump.”
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