There is something deeply disturbing about seeing an expired pandoro sold for 320 euros. Not for the price itself – after all, we live in an era in which everything can become “collectible” – but for what it represents: a charity scandal transformed into collectible merchandise.
From the Pandoro Gate to the memorabilia market
It was 2022 when Selvaggia Lucarelli raised the case, destined to become known as “Pandoro Gate”. The investigation assessed whether consumers had been led to believe that the purchase of the Balocco pink pandoro designed by Chiara Ferragni would help finance the Regina Margherita hospital in Turin, in particular for the purchase of a machine for osteosarcoma research. In reality, the donation had already been established previously, regardless of the sales of the pandoro.
The matter ended with Antitrust fines of 1.3 million euros and, more recently, with Ferragni’s acquittal of the crime of aggravated fraud. The Milan judge did not recognize the aggravating circumstance of the impaired defense of online consumers, reclassifying the crime as simple fraud. And since Codacons had withdrawn the complaint after a compensation agreement, the crime was extinguished.
But while justice was taking its course, someone had already sniffed out the deal.
The trade in expired pandoros
On eBay today, we are witnessing a surreal spectacle. The pink pandoros, which have expired for over two years, have become collector’s items sold for prices ranging between 50 and 320 euros. There are those who sell the complete package with ribbons and stencils, those who are content to sell just the sachet of icing sugar (up to 100 euros), those who even offer just the empty box.
The price range is crazy: it starts from 10 euros for a sachet of icing sugar, goes up to 90-100 euros for the complete pandoro “still packaged” (but still expired), up to 300-320 euros. Some ads specify “Still packaged” or “New, intact,” as if the expiration date that is years past was a negligible detail.
What is striking is not so much the cleverness of the sellers, but the fact that there is a market willing to pay. After the acquittal, prices increased further, as if the judicial outcome had given added value to these now inedible sweets.
We are faced with a paradox of our time: a scandal that called into question the transparency of a charitable marketing operation itself turns into an opportunity for speculation. It doesn’t matter that the product is expired and therefore not edible. It matters that it is that pandoro, that of controversies, of sanctions, of headlines in the newspapers.
The silence of the influencer
Chiara Ferragni, understandably, will not comment on this unexpected commercial epilogue. After a short interview and a press note in which she said she was “moved” by the acquittal and thanked her followers, it is foreseeable that she will no longer return to the topic.
But the market for expired pandoros will continue, fueled by the same economy of attention that made the Ferragni phenomenon possible. Because ultimately, whether it’s a sponsored post or a pandoro sold on eBay for 320 euros, the logic is always the same: anything can become a commodity, even – or perhaps above all – a scandal.
And while someone will jealously keep an expired dessert paid for hundreds of euros, the bitter feeling remains that in this story no one has really learned anything. Consumerism has simply found a new territory to colonize: that of our own collective mistakes, packaged and resold as collector’s items.
