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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;MichaelCarroll, post: 1163906, member: 30642&quot;]Just browsing online and found the following.&nbsp; Hope it sheds a little light for you.</p><p>------</p><p>&quot;The British Royal Mint used to issue proof sets of coins only on very special occasions, such as Coronations, or major design changes to the coinage.</p><p>The first we know of was issued in 1826, and in those far off days, modern packaging and presentation was unknown. It was not until 1970 in the UK, that the Mint started to commercially market specially produced collector and gift packs of coins. Sets before then did not come with certificates or informational booklets. For some issues, we believe even boxes were an optional extra!</p><p>In some of the years, the boxes were printed with the word &quot;Specimen&quot;, and in other years this was omitted. The problem arises because nowadays most of these &quot;specimen&quot; coin sets would be described as proof sets. Often owners of specimen sets do not know that what they own is a proof set. Buyers also get confused.</p><p>Over the years, many dealers or accessory suppliers have made boxes for popular dates, and many of these were made to look like official boxes, some with impressive sounding wording including the word &quot;Specimen&quot;.</p><p>If we check the word specimen in a good dictionary, it simply means representative sample or example, and not necessarily a specially selected sample.&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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