77-Year-Old Slice of Queen Elizabeth’s Wedding Cake Sells for $2,845
You probably wouldn’t ‘want to eat it,’ the auction house warns.
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Sleeping with a slice of a traditional wedding fruitcake under your pillow is supposed to bring you luck and possibly your dream spouse, according to British lore and custom. We’ve now learned that, if you’ve slept atop the right bride and groom’s slice of cake for a long enough time, it can also bring your heirs some money in the bank.
A slice of wedding cake from Queen Elizabeth II’s 1947 marriage to Prince Philip was sold at auction this week for £2,200, which is about $2,845. The extremely rare fruitcake slice, which came from the late royal couple’s original nine-foot-tall, four-tiered, alcohol-laced marital cake, was discovered tucked away in a suitcase under the bed of Marion Polson, who had worked as a housekeeper at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh from 1931 to 1969, according to the BBC.
The Queen — a mere princess at the time — had gifted the cake to Polson in gratitude for her wedding gift. Polson kept the cake in its original box under her bed with a few other items until her death in the 1980s. Along with the decaying cake, she kept an accompanying thank-you note from the Queen, dated November 1947.
Neatly typed on Buckingham Palace letterhead and signed “Elizabeth,” the note read, in part: “My husband and I are deeply touched to know that you shared in giving us such a delightful wedding present. We are both enchanted with the dessert service; the different flowers and the beautiful colouring will, I know, be greatly admired by all who see it. This is a present which we shall use constantly, and whenever we do we shall think of the kindness and good wishes for our happiness which it represents.”
Polson’s family, in Scotland, contacted the auction house Reeman Dansie earlier this year, asking for help in selling the historically significant cake slice. While the relic had been expected to fetch only about £500 (just under $650), it ultimately went, over the phone, to a bidder from China.
Reeman Dansie’s royal expert, James Grinter, called the cake slice “a real little find, a little time capsule of glorious cake.” He noted that it was the first piece of this particular cake ever sold “in its completeness.”
“This one actually has its original contents which is very, very rare,” Grinter told BBC Essex. He added that the original cake was “magnificent” and “enormous” and had been “produced at a time of rationing.”
However, Grinter did share one caveat about the decades-old cake slice, telling the BBC, “I don't think I’d particularly want to eat it, I must admit.”
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