Want a piece of royal history? Here are the souvenirs on sale for King Charles' coronation

Bobbleheads in King Charles' likeness, plush gold crowns trimmed with fake crimson velvet and ermine fur, and flags featuring his portrait are just some of the souvenirs for sale in shops on London streets ahead of the coronation.

Bobbleheads in King Charles’ likeness, plush gold crowns trimmed with fake crimson velvet and ermine fur, and flags featuring his portrait are just some of the souvenirs for sale in shops on London streets ahead of the coronation.

While souvenirs featuring Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s images were spilling out of Windsor shops in the lead-up to their wedding five years ago, the mood is decidedly more muted in London this time around, perhaps echoing King Charles’ wishes for a more prudent, less-extravagant ceremony than his mother’s, amid a cost-of-living crisis.

Tourists in town for the 2018 wedding were spoiled for choice when it came to souvenirs celebrating the royal nuptials. However, I took several trips on the Tube in the span of a few hours and walked nearly 20,000 steps, all to stumble upon only a few souvenir shops that sold the same items as all the others.

Many of the shops in high-traffic tourist areas near Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square carved out space for the King, with items such as party cups that can be used for The Coronation Big Lunch. Made up of neighbourhood street parties and community get-togethers, these lunches are expected to take place across the United Kingdom on May 7, in celebration of the coronation.

There were also decorative pillows declaring “God Save the King” and the requisite shelves dedicated to mugs, mugs and more coffee mugs; memorabilia honouring the late Queen Elizabeth II had equal billing in some of the storefronts. But there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of these souvenirs, you had to look for them in some cases.

Meanwhile, there were no Queen Consort Camilla souvenirs observed at all, at the time of publication.