Britain's Queen Victoria's stocking have sold at auction for a staggering $16,000. The black and white silk stockings, which bear the royal crest, fetched 40 times their list price when they were bought by David Alcock.

Alcock, a bidder from North Wales, bought the legwear for Nottingham's Ruddington Framework Knitters' Museum - in honor of his late father-in-law Jack Smirfitt, who was a curator at the museum.

He said: "I am over the moon. I was wary that they may go for such a high price but we were fairly determined."

"We were fortunate enough to get them and the family will be really pleased."

Museum curator Helen Brownett added: "They were probably made in Nottingham or Derby. It was really important to keep them local and where the public can see them. If they had been bought by a private collector the public wouldn't see them."

Pensioner Mary Youings decided to put the stockings up for auction after keeping them in her loft for decades.

Mrs. Youings, 82, said she only had the idea when she saw auctioneer Charles Hanson sell a pair of the late monarch's bloomers for a staggering $9,000 earlier this year.

She said: "We don't really know exactly how our family came by them, but I've just kept them safe in a box up in the loft for all these years."

"It was only when I heard about Queen Victoria's bloomers being sold that I had any idea they might be worth something. I was astonished."

The stockings are said to have been Victoria's favorite design during the 1870s.