It's incredible what people will pinch and then sell through auction. Then again, it's incredible what people will buy.
Case in point: according to Reuters, a slice of toast left over from the breakfast table of Britain's Prince Charles on the day of his wedding to the late Princess Diana sold at auction for £230 (Dh1,308) last week.
Now, we are talking a slice of toast that was made in 1981 and has been sitting in a cup on a shelf in the home of Rosemarie Smith since she nicked it from a breakfast tray sitting outside Prince Charles' room.
If anything, it says a lot about the power of preservatives, much in the same way a McDonald's burger and fries allegedly fail to decompose even if they've been left out for six months.
But a 31-year-old slice of toast is a different matter. Could you even tell it was toast any more?
"At the time, my daughter was a maid at the palace and one of her duties was to collect Prince Charles' breakfast tray from outside his room," Mrs Smith told Reuters.
"I was with her in the corridor and saw that Prince Charles had left some toast on the tray.
"I had been thinking about a keepsake from the wedding and saw the toast and thought to myself, 'Why not?'"
Most people would have bought a commemorative mug rather than risk arrest by taking a piece of toast. But each to their own, we say.
The toast was sold by Hansons Auctioneers to a buyer in the United Kingdom, Reuters said, adding it was a record for a piece of toast whose royal connection helped to make it one of the most valuable food items ever sold at auction in the UK.
However, Hansons admitted there was no way to prove the toast was from Prince Charles' wedding table.
We assume there was also no way to prove the buyer's intelligence.
Not even one of the wettest summers on record can tempt cash-strapped Brits to jet off to warmer climes this year.
And British Airways (BA) - better known in our house as Abba (Anything But BA) after it threw our holiday plans into disarray a couple of Christmases ago with the threat of a strike - is cashing in on it. "Don't Fly" might be an odd way to advertise your brand, but BA disagrees.
"The weather has been dreadful ,but why would you want to go away? We love staying in cottages in the countryside," David Kitching, who was visiting London for the day with his 13-year-old daughter from Leicestershire, told Reuters.
"There's nothing to do when you are abroad but sit by the pool. Here, we've been to farms, National Trust places, Leicester Square, shops, restaurants and we're going to watch the cricket next week."
According to Reuters, BA says its latest advertising campaign, "Don't Fly. Support Team GB" is a tongue-in-cheek encouragement for Britons to cheer on their athletes during the London Olympics and Paralympics. With predicted gridlock in the capital and three-hour queues at airport immigration, more people are looking to "staycation" or "nearcation" - the idea of vacationing at, or near, your home, Reuters said.
The latest government statistics show visits abroad in the 12 months ending last May are 1 per cent lower than a year earlier.
And as Britain wallows in its second recession in four years, cash-strapped holidaymakers are facing rising unemployment and wages that have failed to keep up with price rises. "We have seen a renaissance in domestic tourism since the height of the credit crunch in 2009 and once people realised what Britain had to offer, they wanted to do it again," Sarah Long, head of corporate communications at VisitEngland, was quoted by Reuters as saying.
A historically weak pound, which has lost a quarter of its value against the dollar since a peak in late 2007, has made foreign jaunts more expensive and a government-funded domestic tourism campaign, launched this spring, asked "Why would you want to go abroad?"
"We're going to Norfolk next week, we want to escape and it's nice and quiet," Phil Mimms, who is unemployed, told Reuters.
"Besides," the family man added, "we couldn't afford to go abroad, it's too expensive - especially with four of us."