Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s 77-Year-Old Wedding Cake Resurfaces and Sells for $2,834

Then-Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten wed on Thursday, November 20, 1947. After a grand ceremony at London’s Westminster Abbey, the pair celebrated with 2,000 guests — likely requiring a lot of cake.

A slice of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s wedding cake recently sold at auction for a whopping £2,200 ($2,834). The boozy fruit cake, which was 9-feet tall and had four tiers, was gifted to Marion Polson, the former housekeeper at Edinburgh’s Palace of Holyroodhouse, by Princess Elizabeth.

Polson had bought the newlyweds a dessert service, and the future queen gifted her the cake slice in appreciation. The cake came in a presentation box with a note from Princess Elizabeth, written in 1947, which thanked Polson for the wedding present and said, “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.”

Marion Polson passed away in the 1980s, and her family offered the cake slice for auction earlier in 2024. The cake is no longer edible, but James Grinter, of auction house Reeman Dansie, called it a “little time capsule of glorious cake.” He said that this is the first piece of the cake ever sold “in its completeness.”

“This one actually has its original contents, which is very, very rare,” he added. The auction house expected the slice of fruit cake to sell for around £500 ($644), but a bidder from China purchased the item for £2,200 ($2,834).

This isn’t the first slice of royal wedding cake to hit the auction block. Prince Charles and Princess Diana had 23 wedding cakes baked for their July 29, 1981, nuptials. Forty-one years later, the cake sold at auction for £2,100, as reported by Royal Central. In 2014, Gee Chuang, CEO of a Silicon Valley startup, paid $7,500 at auction for a slice of Prince William and Duchess Kate’s wedding cake. Another elaborate fruit cake, 17 types of sugar-paste flowers adorned this one.