It’s safe to say that the most valuable cracker in the world probably tastes very, very stale.
A simple cracker made of water and flour that survived the sinking of the Titanic 103 years ago is set to go to auction later this month, reports the Guardian.
The pilot cracker, made by Spillers and Bakers, was included in a survival kit stored on one of the doomed ship’s 20 lifeboats and was kept as a souvenir.
It was taken by James Fenwick, a passenger honeymooning with his new wife on the SS Carpathia, which came to aid the Titanic’s survivors. He put the small snack item in a Kodak photographic envelope along with a note that read: “Pilot biscuit from Titanic lifeboat 1912.”
The cracker is expected to fetch between 8,000 pounds ($12,392) to 10,000 pounds ($15,940) at Henry Aldridge & Son auctioneers in Wiltshire, England on Oct. 24.
Andrew Aldridge, the auctioneer, told the Guardian:
“It is the world’s most valuable biscuit. We don’t know which lifeboat the biscuit came from but there are no other Titanic lifeboat biscuits in existence, to my knowledge. It is incredible that this biscuit has survived such a dramatic event.”
Aldridge said that a cracker from the also ill-fated Lusitania sold for 3,000 pounds a few years ago.
The Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage from Southhampton, England, to New York City, killing 1,517 passengers.
