No bid: letter from Queen Elizabeth II was left behind

2023-10-30 13:45:00

A personal letter from the late British Queen Elizabeth II to her midwife has not found a new owner. At the auction at a Stuttgart auction house on Saturday in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, no bids were placed for the letter from 1964, auctioneer Réne Waldrab confirmed on Monday in Stuttgart. Potential buyers would now have the opportunity to purchase the document for eight weeks after the sale.

The letter shows a “beautiful insight into the Queen’s private life” and is extraordinary, said Waldrab at the auction on Saturday, as can be seen in a video on the auction house’s Facebook page. “It is usually avoided that something like this gets out.” Nevertheless, no one wanted to offer the required starting bid of 6,200 euros for the double-sided and well-preserved letter.

Also read: Auction house auctions off personal letter from Queen Elizabeth II.

According to the auction house, the monarch (1926-2022) reports on her youngest son Edward, now the Duke of Edinburgh, in the personal, handwritten letter from August 1964. Last year, the auction house auctioned off a handwritten letter from the British Queen. The contract was won by a woman from another European country and she bought it at auction for more than 8,000 euros.

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A spokeswoman for the auction house had explained in advance that the letter had been sent in by a private person. Handwritten letters from Queen Elizabeth II are rare, even in museums. Especially after the death of the monarch last year, interest in things from the British royal family grew again.