Story highlights
The piece of toast came from Prince Charles' breakfast tray
It could fetch up to £500 or $778
People seem to see images in lots of food
A grilled cheese sandwich of the Virgin Mary sold for $28,000
Your typical royal toast likely involves a bit of the bubbly. This one just involves some stale bread.
Up for auction in the United Kingdom this week is a piece of toast from Prince Charles’ breakfast tray on the morning he married Lady Diana Spencer on July 29, 1981.
Rosemarie Smith snatched the crispy piece of bread during a visit to Buckingham Palace. Her daughter, who worked for the royal family for almost three decades, 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 in a report on the auctioneers’ website. “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’?”
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. “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 ($778) when it goes on the block Thursday.
“If only the toast could talk,” he said. “I suspect Prince Charles was a little nervous on the morning of the big day and this little piece of toast survived!”
Of course, this isn’t the first bit of food auctioned off for its unique qualities.
Last month, a McDonalds Chicken McNugget that had “an uncanny resemblance to the undead” attracted 31 bidders. The zombie McNugget sold for $50.
Over the years, a number of folks have claimed to have seen the images of religious figures and celebrities in a host of food items.
There was the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich for which an Internet casino site claimed to have paid $28,000.
Last year, a couple in Somerset, England, hoped to cash in on a mango-flavored jelly that they said looked like Kate Middleton.
Capitalizing on the interest in such items, a company called Burnt Impressions developed a Jesus toaster that burns his image into your morning breakfast routine
Talk about your bread of life!