Marc Allum welcomed one guest who was armed with an unusual collection of Royal memorabilia on Antiques Roadshow. The guest had brought him a wooden box filled with pieces of cake all wrapped up in parchment with notes inscribed on the wrapping to detail where exactly the pieces originated from and the surprising valuation not only left the owner speechless but shocked Marc too.
“I’m quite flabbergasted by this, it’s a collection of pieces of cake,” the BBC expert began.
“Now they’re royal pieces of cake, aren’t they and before I describe a couple of these pieces I want you tell me how you came to have them.”
The guest revealed: “My mother lived in Windsor and she had a friend connections in Windsor castle and that’s how we got them.”
“Let’s describe some of the things in this box,” Marc continued.“One of them being a piece of silk from Queen Victoria’s train apparently.
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Marc explained: “[It] becomes even more exciting when we dig in to the cake because if we take this piece out wrapped in cellophane here and read it.
“It says: ‘Piece of Queen Victoria’s 80th birthday cake 1899’.”
“We have a strong tradition in this country of giving cake out after weddings or birthdays or whatever,” Marc continued.
“And for those people who may have been absent or just purely as souvenirs we send them pieces of cake.”
The antiques expert was surprised to note there were pieces of cake in the box up to 150 years old.
He remarked: “Here we have in the 19th century prime examples of this tradition and I am absolute staggered because we’ve got bits of fruit cake here that are a 120, 30, 50, 50 years old.
“The Queen’s Jubilee cake June 1877 and I’m reading off the labels because I have to be honest with you what’s incredible is that someone is annotated these mainly in the same hand so I’m having to take it that that’s correct.
“I’m staggered by all the royal connections going on in this little box.
“According to the inscription here this box appears to have been worked by the Princess Royal, Queen Victoria’s daughter who later became Empress Frederick of Germany.”
Marc confessed the collection was one of the most difficult pieces he’s ever evaluated.
He added: “I counted quickly in there and I counted 16 pieces of fruit cake with a casket of royal provenance and a lot of peripheral items as well that have connections with Victoria.”
The antiques expert revealed the collection was worth between £3,000-5,000.
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Speechless, the owner of the usual collection struggled to respond to the whopping valuation.
“I had no idea it was worth anything like that,” she eventually remarked.
“I think I may have even surprised myself,” Marc joked.
Elsewhere, an Elizabethan painting received a staggering valuation after its hidden messages were decoded.
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