1955 Maundy Set

[Bugmann1974]

What Info can anyone give me on the Maundy sets? I know the mintages are very low but how often do they come to market? Is my case original?

 

[physics-fan3.14]

It looks original. They don't come to the market often because they aren't that many of them made. To get one, you have to be invited to a special ceremony with the queen. It used to be a tradition to give coins to the poor at Easter, but its evolved into an elaborate ceremony.

[Conder101]

The coins do have relatively low mintages but they do come on the market fairly frequently, but not so often in original holders. It used to be that the mintages were much higher because not only were coins given to the recipients at the ceremony, but they could be ordered by anyone from the bank. That ended in 1909 After that the only coins were those given to the recipients at the ceremony, plus additional sets for all the officials and invited guests there as well. What you have is one of the sets for officials or guests in its original holder.

 

The original holder sets aren't seen very often because everyone wanted to put the coins into individual holders for their collections (all the pennies together, all the two pence together etc) and the holders were discarded. Then later they wanted them in these things called slabs.

 

What are truly scarce are the coins in the original presentation pouches (red with the food and clothing allowance in regular money, and white wit the maundy money) and documents received by the recipients at the ceremony. In 1955 there would have been only 58 such sets made and many of them were probably immediately broken up and the coins sold off. Even this year only 164 such sets were made.