I bought a 1879 victoria young head silver maundy money set today its in a nice but undated box and is in uncirculated condition but the 1d has a small mark on the face, possibly a dent from a milled coin corner impact. it is to small for me to photograph well with my phone camera. I pay £100 for it, it was priced at £145 in the window. Did i pay to much of it?
I think you did quite well actually, as long as the coins are all unc. Eight years ago that set was valued at $160. One thing you might like to be aware of, those cases were not issued by the British govt. They were issued by the banks in Great Britain. I can also tell you it is not an original case. All of the Victoria cases were dated to match the coins inside them. What you have in an Elizabeth case, all were undated, that someone has used for the Victoria coins. That reduces the value of the set somewhat, probably about 20% or so.
Thanks GDJMSP, apart from the 1d they do look unc. I think it also has some of the tone buffed by someone touching the little coin to look at it. It would be nice to have the original box. I really like them and will keep them.
Nice set , one I've always wanted . Congrats . Doug I didn't know Maundy sets came with cases , I thought they were all made for them in the aftermarket .
What a lot of people don't understand or realize is that not all Maundy coins were handed out to individuals by the King/Queen. In the Maundy ceremony the Monarch hands each person 2 purses. One, a red purse, contains ordinary coinage which is to take the place of the food and clothing that the Monarch gave the person in the original (old) ceremony. The other purse, a white one, contains the actual Maundy money, the coins minted in sterling silver. And those coins are equal in pence to the age of the Monarch. ie: if the King is 57, the person gets 57 pence worth of Maundy money. Then there are the additional coins (few in number) that are/were given to the banks by the Crown and allowed to be sold to anybody who wanted to buy them. As I said, it was the banks who created the cases and sold the coins in the cases. The case are considered original. I am not sure of exactly what year they started using these cases, (I used to know but have forgotten and am too lazy to try and dig it up), but I do know they do not go all the way back the Charles II in 1660 which was when the Maundy ceremony originated. But you are correct in a way Rusty for there were also some after-market cases made and sold. Some of them are quite modern. It's one of those things where you have to know your cases as well as the coins.
Thanks GDJMSP that was interesting to read, I think my box is probably later than the coins. It has a good brass h ook and eye. I think it still adds some value.
There is no "probably" about it. As I told you, all of the Victoria cases had the date printed right on the outside of the case. If the coins were dated 1879, then the case had 1879 printed on it.
I didn't take it that you were. I thought perhaps you merely misunderstood, so I want to explain for clarity. And by the way, even the original cases had the same kind of clasps on them. They looked identical to your case except for the printing on the outside.
So if the Monarch's 57 years old, a recipient gets 57 pence worth of Maundy money, i.e., at least five or six EACH of the 1, 2, 3, and 4 pence coins?? Considering the Victorian mintages, seems like that would result in very very few recipients? And how were those 20+ pieces arranged in the case? Now you have me curious.
The number of recipients is also determined by the Monarch's age. You see, the ceremony goes all the way back to the 13th century. The very first Maundy ceremony reportedly only had 13 recipients, the number of which symbolized the 12 Apostles and Christ. But over the years the ceremony and and certain facets of the ceremony were changed. That changing continued somewhat even in the 20th century. But basically it has remained the same since Charles II. The sets that were handed out by the Crown to the poor were in small purses with the coins just being loose inside the purse. It was only in those sets that the number of coins equaled the monarchs age in pence. The sets sold by the banks and in the hard cases, those sets only had 4 coins in them - a 1, 2, 3 and 4 pence coin.
I found this image online: "Yeomen of the Guards carry the Maundy money in red and white leather purses on golden alms trays on their heads. The money in the red purse is money in lieu of food and clothing while the money in the white purse is the Maundy coins."
As you can tell from that image Doug there are quite a few sets of coins on those trays. The Queen is 86 or 87 years old now, but from what I have read they give away roughly 2,000 full sets of Maundy coins. 87 of those sets would go to the poor and the aged. The rest go to the banks.
