Family Finds Box Of 12 Unopened Christmas Crackers About 100 Years Old In A Wardrobe And Nobody Knows What Is Inside Now That They Sold For £72

Somewhere in a wardrobe in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, a box of Christmas crackers sat sealed for about 100 years. Now it has found a new home after selling for £72 at auction, as reported by BBC News.

The box holds 12 unopened crackers, and nobody has pulled a single one. What is inside each paper tube has stayed a secret for about 100 years.

A Wardrobe Find At John Goddard’s House

The crackers were discovered in a wardrobe at the home of John Goddard in Gainsborough. His daughters, Nicky Goddard and Karen Grundy, say the family had held onto them for a very long time.

They believe the crackers were given to their grandparents in the 1920s or 1930s by friends in Mablethorpe, a seaside town on the Lincolnshire coast. They were then passed down to their parents as a wedding gift.

That is a lot of family history for one cardboard box.

A Sticker Calls Them “Joey Crackers”

A sticker on the side of the box describes the contents as “Joey Crackers” and says they were “filled with party hats and caps.” So the sealed tubes may hold paper hats, a classic part of a British Christmas table.

The BBC reports that the sale took place on Thursday at Potters Auction Saleroom in Messingham, North Lincolnshire. The box was offered as an unusual vintage item.

The family kept the box through decades of Christmases, and not one of the dozen crackers was ever pulled.

“A Little Window Into Time,” Says The Auctioneer

Auctioneer Paul Potter described the box as a “little window into time.” For a collector, it is a time capsule from an era of homemade holiday traditions.

He was candid about the result. “We were pleased to sell them but would have liked a little bit more, perhaps,” he said.

“At the end of the day, it’s an unusual item [and] there were quite a lot of bids,” Potter added. “The story goes on. Someone else has got them now.”

“They Were Priceless” To The Family

For the Goddard family, the £72 price was never the point. Nicky Goddard said after the auction, “It was never [about] how much they were worth. The fact they were part of our wonderful family [meant that to us] they were priceless.”

She also said she would love to hear from the new owners if they ever open the box. “It would be lovely to know what was actually in them,” she said, “But to us it was another legacy and memory of our wonderful parents.”

That is the kind of sentiment that turns a small sale into a good story. The box meant something because of who had held it before.

How The Christmas Cracker Got Its Bang

The Christmas cracker is a British invention, and its story is often traced to a London confectioner named Tom Smith in the 1840s. He is credited with adding a small “snap” to a twist of paper that held sweets, and the idea grew into the paper tube filled with a hat, a joke and a small gift.

By the 1920s and 1930s, when the Goddard crackers are thought to have been given as a present, crackers were a familiar sight at holiday tables across Britain. Paper hats were part of the fun, and families wore them throughout dinner.

Antiques Trade Gazette reported earlier this year on how early crackers have drawn interest at auction. It said that a decade ago curators at the V&A used X-ray imaging to look inside a 1920s Tom Smith cracker without pulling it open, and the scan revealed a small chocolate inside.

Why Sealed Antiques Are So Tempting

There is a special pull to something that has never been opened. A sealed box asks the buyer to choose between keeping it as it is and satisfying curiosity, and every collector answers that question a little differently.

Many collectors say that once an item like this is opened it cannot be put back the way it was. Keeping it sealed preserves the history, which is part of why buyers pay for items in original packaging.

That is a decision for the new owner of the Goddard crackers, and it adds a little suspense to a very gentle story.

If You Find A Time Capsule At Home

If you find an old box like this in a wardrobe or attic, resist the urge to open or rearrange it right away. Take photos, note any stickers or labels, and write down what you know about where it came from.

Family stories matter, too. The Goddards were able to say who gave the crackers to their grandparents, where those friends lived and how they were passed down, and that background helps an auctioneer tell the story.

A local saleroom can give you an honest idea of what an item might fetch. As this sale showed, an unusual piece with a good story can draw “quite a lot of bids,” even when the price is modest.

A Small Price For A Hundred Years Of Memory

At £72 for a box of 12 crackers, this was not a big-money sale. But it was the kind of auction result that makes people smile.

A family got to share its history, an auctioneer called it a window into time, and a new owner now has a century-old holiday curiosity to keep or open. In the end, that is what makes vintage hunting so much fun.

Vinyl and Velvet