An iconic piece of history is up for auction this weekend.
A first-class dinner menu that was recovered from the Titanic is expected to garner upwards of $86,000 in auction at Henry Aldridge & Son in the U.K.
The menu, which is dated April 11, three days before the ship’s tragic sinking on April 14, 1912, is embossed with the red White Star Line flag and partially water-damaged on both sides. The auction house suspects the menu was exposed to waters in the North Atlantic, either by a survivor of the ship or recovered from someone who had died at sea.
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“Original Titanic menus, they’re just not discovered,” said Andrew Aldridge, the managing director of Henry Aldridge & Son, per the New York Times. “We know where most of them are. So to have a completely fresh discovery of this nature and this caliber is very, very exciting.”
The first-class dinner menu from aboard the Titanic in 1912 (Henry Aldridge & Son)
The menu offers a peak into what life on the ship would’ve been like for a first-class passenger, showcasing 20 different menu options including “Squab a la Godard,” “Spring Lamb,” “Tournado of Beef a la Victoria,” “Mallard Duck,” and “Apricots Bordaloue.”
It’s currently the only known menu floating around that hasn’t already been sold — a first-class lunch menu from Titanic sold for $120,000 in 2012 while another first-class dinner menu sold for $118,000 in 2015.
The menu was found in the 1960s in a photo album that once belonged to a man named Len Stephenson, an award-winning historian from Nova Scotia.
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“The menu is a remarkable survivor from the most famous Ocean liner of all time,” the auction house wrote. “All iconic names from the history of this ship and all would have eaten from the selection of food offered.”
The auction will be held Saturday in a live auction in Wiltshire with the starting bid beginning at roughly $36,670.
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