Queen Victoria gift chocolate box, 1900. 
 
 In 1899 Queen Victoria decided to send a gift of tin boxes of chocolate to her troops serving in South Africa. It was intended that every soldier and officer should receive a box with the inscription 'South Africa 1900' and in the Queen's handwriting 'I wish you a happy New Year'. 
 
 In order to carry out this project, the Queen commissioned the country's three principal chocolate manufacturers, J S Fry & Sons, Cadbury Brothers Limited and Rowntree and Company Limited, to undertake the order for what amounted, by the end of 1900, to 123,000 tins. As Quakers, all three manufacturers refused to accept payment for the order and, not wishing to profit from the War, they offered to donate the chocolate instead. 
 
 The manufacture of the tin boxes themselves was funded personally by the Queen. They were based on a design by Barclay and Fry Limited of Southwark, but since each of the chocolate manufacturers used different firms to supply the tins, there are variations in their dimensions, the shade of colouring and the printing of the portrait medallion of the Queen. The tins had rounded corners for ease of storage in a soldier's knapsack and each contained a half-pound of vanilla chocolate. 
 
 As a gift from the Queen, many soldiers preserved their tins with the chocolate intact, even posting them back home for safe-keeping. In exceptional cases the recipients did not even dare untie the ribbon round the packaging. The tins were so highly valued by their contemporaries that soldiers who were prepared to sell them could ask prices as high as £20. An Army Order issued from Bloemfontein in April 1900 decreed that the tins were to be forwarded to officers and men who had been invalided home before the Queen's gift arrived, and to next of kin of those who had died during the Boer War (1899-1902). ||||| It was meant to be eaten well over a century ago. 
 
 But Queen Victoria's gift of a tin and bar of chocolate to a soldier serving in South Africa in the brutal Boer War of 1899 - 1902 was never consumed. 
 
 Queen Victoria sent choclate to the troops in 1900 
 
 It might look as tasty as dried mud, but auctioneers are estimating it will fetch £50 to £300 when it goes under the hammer next Tuesday. 
 
 The chocolate they say, is probably the "most controversial chocolate" ever made - sparking a right Royal row that threatened to blacken the names of the country’s top chocolate makers. 
 
 Paul Cooper of Scunthorpe-based Eddisons CJM said: “In 1899 the Queen decided to cheer up her troops fighting in the war . . . which was going rather badly at the time . . . by personally paying for a gift tin of chocolate to be sent to every ordinary soldier. 
 
 “The problem was that all of the country’s top chocolate makers . . . Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree . . . were owned by Quakers. 
 
 The chocolate was meant to be eaten over a century ago 
 
 "They were pacifists, opposed to the war and they were appalled by the idea of being seen to profit from the fighting.” 
 
 The manufacturers realised that refusing to comply would cause them immense reputational damage. 
 
 In the end they decided to donate the chocolate free of charge but unbranded and in tins that did not carry their names. 
 
 Mr Cooper said: "The Queen was not amused. She wanted the boys to know they were getting best British chocolate. 
 
 "The firms backed down again, sort of. Some of the chocolate was then marked but the tins never were.” 
 
 Last month their auction of 103-year-old chocolate bars sent to WW1 soldier Richard Bullimore attracted international headlines. 
 
 A lot including Mr Bullimore's Distinguished Conduct Medal fetched over £3,000. 
 
 It also sparked the attention of Tuesday's seller - a woman in London who thought she had even older chocolate. 
 
 She once owned a shop in Lincoln’s Inn Fields selling collectables and her chocolate had lingered in a cupboard for a quarter of the century. 
 
 Although the Queen's gift was ridiculed by the Continental media at the time, the soldiers loved their Royal gift. 
 
 Many sent their tins home unopened. Others turned down offers of £20 - despite only earning something like a shilling a day. 
 
 The auction catalogue is available at www.eddisonscjmasset.com or Bidspotter.co.uk.
– When Eddisons CJM put a tin of World War I chocolates up for auction last month, there was one person who wasn't terribly impressed. "A lady from London wrote and said, 'Hundred-and-three-year-old chocolate is not so special,'" auctioneer Paul Cooper tells the Daily Express. That's because that woman had in her possession something even better: a tin of chocolates made in 1900, one of the gifts Queen Victoria had commissioned for soldiers fighting overseas in the Boer War to boost morale, the BBC reports. The red, gold, and blue container, made by Hudson Scott and Sons in Carlisle, was designed with "rounded corners for ease of storage in a soldier's knapsack" and to hold 8 ounces of vanilla chocolate, per the National Army Museum. That confection, the auction house tells the BBC, was "probably the most controversial chocolate ever made." That's because the three main chocolate-makers in the UK at the time—JS Fry, Rowntree, and Cadbury—were helmed by pacifist Quakers who didn't want to be seen as making money from the war. They didn't want to spurn the queen, however, so their compromise was to donate the chocolate for free, as well as brand the chocolate with their company names (the queen wanted soldiers to know they were getting the best), but not the tins. As for how the unnamed woman came to have this 118-year-old tin, she says it's been sitting for a long time in a cupboard drawer and thinks it came from her late husband's family. A Nestle archivist tells the Express the chocolate inside is "probably not in as bad a condition as you might think, but I wouldn't recommend eating it." The Yorkshire Post reports the tin, which will go up for auction Tuesday, could fetch up to $400. (This more modern chocolate is pink.)