Prince Charles' leftover bread goes up for auction

Jul 16, 2012 |

London

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A piece of toast from Prince Charles' breakfast tray on the morning he married Lady Diana on July 29, 1981 will go under the hammer in UK this week and the souvenir could fetch up to 500 pounds.

The slice is to be sold on behalf of Rosemarie Smith, whose daughter worked as a maid and a dresser for the royal family for almost three decades. Rosemarie Smith snatched the crispy piece of bread during a visit to Buckingham Palace. Her daughter had invited Smith to spend the hours ahead of the wedding at the palace with her.

"At the time my daughter was a maid at the Palace and one of her duties was to collect Prince Charles's breakfast tray from outside his room," Smith said on the website of Charles Hanson Auctioneers.

"I was with her in the corridor and saw that Prince Charles had left some toast on the tray. I had been thinking about a keepsake from the wedding and saw the toast and thought to myself: 'Why not'?" Smith said.

William and Kate's wedding and the Queen's Jubilee got Smith thinking that her bit of royal bread could be worth something. "I just wandered into the auctioneers out of curiosity and asked them if it was worth anything," she said, adding: "I was pleasantly surprised to hear them agree with me that it could be of quite some value to Royal collectors."

Auctioneer Charles Hanson said he believes the souvenir could fetch up to 500 pounds (USD 778) when it goes on the block on Thursday.

"If only the toast could talk, i suspect Prince Charles was a little nervous on the morning of the big day and this little piece of toast survived!" he said. Last month, a McDonalds Chicken McNugget that had "an uncanny resemblance to the undead" attracted 31 bidders.

The zombie McNugget sold for USD 50. A couple in Somerset, England, hoped to cash in on a mango-flavored jelly that they said looked like Kate Middleton last year.

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