Pieces of smashed debris purportedly from Prince Philip’s car crash near Sandringham have been listed for sale on auction site eBay.
Ghoulish memorabilia up for sale includes fragments of plastic allegedly belonging to the Land Rover Freelander which the Duke of Edinburgh was driving when he collided with a Kia hatchback on the A149 near the royal estate on Thursday.
Scraps of plastic and metal can be bought for starting bids of 99p in the “bizarre auction”, which will end on 26 January, the Daily Mirror reports.
The seller, who has not been identified, claims that they “tidied up” the debris from the roadside following the smash.
“There’s no financial gain in this for me,” they wrote, saying that any money raised from the sale would go to the charity Cancer Research.
One of the passengers in the Kia was treated for a broken wrist after the accident on Thursday afternoon, which the Duke blamed on strong sunlight dazzling him as he attempted to pull out from a side road.
The royal reportedly said “I’m such a fool” as he was helped, shaken but unharmed, from his wrecked Freelander, says the Daily Mail.
Although he subsequently passed a breathalyser and an eyesight test administered by police, the incident sparked a wider debate in the national press and on social media about the potential safety risks posed by elderly drivers.
Further concerns were raised when, two days after the collision, he was spotted behind the wheel of a brand-new Land Rover close to the Sandringham estate, apparently driving without a seatbelt.
A spokeswoman for Norfolk Constabulary said that officers had spoken to the Duke to offer “suitable words of advice”. However, there has been no indication that the royal intends to give up driving.
Prince Philip is “part of that no nonsense post-war generation, a man who knows his own mind and has lived a life of people trying to tell him what to do and ignoring them”, says Sky News royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills.
However, in this case his fierce independent streak has come off as “arrogant and ill thought out” in the eyes of many, says Mills.
