The discarded bread, which was originally sold in 1991, reportedly dates back to the eve of the Beatles’ final show at the Cavern Club in Liverpool
For decades, the Beatles have auctioned off pieces of their history. Last year, one of John Lennon’s guitars sold for nearly $2.9 million. Just three years before that, rare handwritten setlists from their early days made their way to the auction block. In 2015, the band’s first-ever record contract, signed in 1961, sold for $75,000. The latest Beatles memorabilia to be auctioned off isn’t just a piece of history — it’s a piece of toast.
George Harrison‘s unfinished breakfast toast from 1963 was sold at auction to Joseph O’Donnell, who added the framed crust to a healthy collection of Beatles and other music-related memorabilia. The payment has not yet been disclosed, but when the artifact was previously sold at auction in 1991, it was part of a collection that — alongside Lennon’s love letter to his ex-wife Cynthia — brought in $94,800 at Christie’s in London.
The toast originally belonged first to Harrison, who left it on his plate, allowing Sue Houghton to save and preserve it. Then 15 years old, the Beatles fan was visiting Harrison’s family home when she slipped the scrap into her pocket and later secured it in her scrapbook. “Piece of George’s breakfast,” she wrote, dated Feb. 8, 1963. The date marks the eve of the Beatles’ final show at the Cavern Club in Liverpool.
“It’s a brilliant story that is both bizarre, historical and a story I’ll continue telling friends, memorabilia collectors and fellow Beatles fans,” O’Donnell shared in a statement.
Still, Harrison himself denied wasting even a crumb of his toast at breakfast. “Well, I never authenticated it! That’s totally bullshit,” the musician told Vox Magazine in 1992. “I really dislike that. I ate all my toast, I never left any. The madness is the people selling it, and the people actually buying it. It’s Monty Python time: how much would they pay for a piece of sweat? Or a piece of ear wax?”
