Princess Diana’s old bicycle has sold for £44,000.
The 1970s Raleigh Traveller ladies bike went for twice the price it was expected to fetch when it was purchased by an online American bidder from an auction held by Burstow & Hewett Auctioneers in Battle, East Sussex, England, last week.
Diana – who tragically died at the age of 36 in a car accident in Paris – used to ride the bicycle each day to her former workplace, a nursery in London, before she married Prince Charles in 1981. After marrying into the British royal family the bike was apparently deemed “not suitable for a royal” by officials so she got rid of it.
It previously fetched £9,200 when it was sold in 2018, and was only expected to sell for between £15,000 and £20,000 this time around.
When it went under the hammer, auctioneer Mark Ellin described it as “probably the most famous bike in the world”, while the Burstow and Hewett auction house listed it as the “shame bike” and “a famous symbol of Diana’s oppression”.
The item came with a letter of authenticity from Gerald Stonehill, who acquired the bike directly from the Diana. The letter mentions the conditions of the tyres as well as pen marks on the saddle.
It is believed the bike sold for such a high price due to the enormous popularity of the Netflix series ‘The Crown’ which tells a fictionalised version of the history of the British royal family, in which Diana is played by Emma Corrin.
The new owner of the historic bike has been revealed to be Barry Glazer, a prominent attorney in Baltimore, Maryland,
In a statement, his firm The Law Office of Barry R Glazer LLC, said he “will be setting up a memorial dedicated to the British Royal Family’s basic racist roots. The memorial will be set up in an enclave in his office located in a historic building, utilised by the underground ‘railroad’ to assist slaves to freedom in Baltimore”.