Buyers and sellers have wasted little time after the death of the Queen in cashing in on sales of royal memorabilia.
Over the weekend there has been a rush from people around the world to buy souvenirs – from mugs to dolls, newspapers, coins, jewellery and even teabags – as manufacturers phase out items with the Queen’s likeness to make room for ones of her son King Charles III.
On the classifieds site Gumtree, a London-based seller is cashing in on the moment by listing his collection of commemorative Queen Elizabeth coins for £70,000. On the same site, you can buy a Queen Elizabeth barbie doll for £3,000, and a stool that the seller claims was used at her 1953 coronation for £650.
On eBay, a copy of London’s Evening Standard newspaper from Friday, the day after the news of her death was announced, is listed with a “buy it now” price of £999.99. A copy of the Telegraph from the same day is currently bidding at £250. And a copy of Friday’s Guardian will set you back £99.
A 1953 coronation mug, which was given as a gift to British schoolchildren at the time, can be bought for between £5 and £10, or an unopened jar of “Ma’amite” is available for £15.
In Canada, meanwhile, one seller has listed, with a starting bid of C$110 (£66), their scrap book of newspaper cuttings from the 1951 royal tour of the country. And in Cape Town, South Africa, an artist is selling his floral tribute to the Queen for £2,750.
The Royal Mint experienced extremely high volume of traffic to its website in the 24 hours after the Queen’s death as visitors sought to buy the last coins – and some new commemorative offerings – featuring the Queen’s image. One Twitter user posted a screenshot showing 6,390 people ahead of him in the virtual queue.
By 11am on Friday, numerous commemorative Elizabeth II coins were already listed as out of stock, from an £8 Queen Elizabeth II 1967 florin to a £3,575 gold proof crown released in 2005 to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.
On Twitter, meanwhile, one user is selling £1.35-worth of coins for £5.50, or best offer.
Jubilees, in particular, are worth millions in memorabilia sales. For the Queen’s recent platinum celebration, the Centre for Retail Research found that spending on souvenirs, memorabilia and gifts exceeded £281m.
To commemorate her 70-year reign, one eBay user listed a teabag supposedly used by the late Queen for $12,000 (£10,300), and it sold within days.
The listing read: “It was used by Queen Elizabeth II Regina Britannia and smuggled out of Windsor Castle by the special exterminator who was called in to help her majesty cope with the great London roach infestations of the 1990s.”
The seller from Georgia, US, described the teabag as “‘extremely rare” and claimed it was smuggled out of Windsor Castle in 1998. It came with a certificate of authenticity issued by the Institute of Excellence in Certificates of Authenticity, which said it “has determined beyond any doubt that the following statements are absolutely true: This is a teabag.”
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For those who have spent years collecting rare royal memorabilia, the Queen’s death marks the start of those items’ expected rise in value.
Anita Atkinson, 56, a royal superfan, owns what is believed to be the world’s largest collection of royal memorabilia, housed in a royal-themed library and museum within her home in Durham.
She told the Newcastle Chronicle that she had more than 12,000 items of memorabilia in total – and she did not intend to stop now that the Queen has died.
She was flying the union flag outside her home at half mast and plans to travel to London on Friday for the official period of mourning.
In 2021, polling by the TV producer Nick Bullen for a programme about the royal family showed that the Queen’s brand was “greater than Nike, Ferrari and Pepsi” in terms of revenue pull.
The Queen, according to his research, was 23 times bigger than the Beckhams and three times bigger than the Obamas in terms of brand recognition and favourability.