LONDON (AFP)
A piece of toast believed to have been served to Britain's Prince
Charles for breakfast on the day he married princess Diana in
1981 sold Thursday for £230, an auction house said.
The mother of a former servant at Buckingham Palace kept the
royal wedding day souvenir, which was the subject of a bidding
war at Charles Hanson Auctioneers near Derby in central England.
"There were two telephone bidders fighting it out for the slice.
It was exciting," a spokesman said. "There was a round of
applause when the gavel dropped then it was like 'Oh crumbs...
it's sold!'"
The piece of toasted white bread was owned by Rosemarie Smith,
whose daughter was a maid at the palace on the morning of the
wedding on July 29, 1981, which was watched by 750 million people
around the globe.
"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, 83, said in a statement.
"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?'"
The piece of toast stayed in a cup on a shelf at her home until
last year, when she started to wonder if it would be valuable,
due to international interest in the wedding of Charles and
Diana's son Prince William to Kate Middleton.
"I just wandered into the auctioneers out of curiosity and asked
them if it was worth anything," she said. "I was pleasantly
surprised to hear them agree with me that it could be of quite
some value to royal collectors."
