Someone Just Paid $23K for a Cracker

A Greek investor is now the proud owner of "the [world's] most expensive biscuit"—a 103-year-old cracker that survived the sinking of the Titanic, Mashable reports. The Spillers and Bakers Pilot biscuit, which made its way into a survival kit on one of the lifeboats that April night in 1912 when the ship went under, was sold Monday at a UK auction house for $23,000, give or take a few crumbs, per UPI. A photo of the iceberg that doomed the Titanic was also sold, for just over $32,000. "It is incredible that this biscuit has survived such a dramatic event—the sinking of the world's largest ocean liner—costing 1,500 lives," auctioneer Andrew Aldridge of Henry Aldridge & Son tells the Salisbury Journal. The cracker had been salvaged by one James Fenwick, a passenger on the RMS Carpathia, the boat that went to the aid of Titanic passengers that night, per the Journal.

Fenwick kept the cracker in a Kodak photo envelope with a note that read: "Pilot biscuit from Titanic lifeboat April 1912." Other expensive crackers Aldridge is aware of include one from one of Ernest Shackleton's adventures (that one went for about $4,500, Aldridge notes) and one from the Lusitania, now safe in an Irish museum and said to be valued at between $12,000 and $15,000—making Aldridge confident that he could proclaim the Titanic cracker "the most valuable biscuit in the world." One more item that got snatched up at the auction: a "loving cup," sold for nearly $200,000 (which makes it the third most-expensive Titanic artifact ever, per the Journal), presented to the captain of the Carpathia by survivor Molly Brown using donations from wealthy survivors of the tragedy. (The Titanic's final lunch menu went up for auction a few weeks back.)