10 Licente Independence

Lesotho's 1966 independence coinage was issued to mark the country's formal separation from British rule on October 4th of that year, when Basutoland became the Kingdom of Lesotho under Moshoeshoe II. The silver pieces in this set were struck for presentation and collector purposes rather than circulation — a newly independent, landlocked nation entirely surrounded by South Africa had little infrastructure for distributing commemorative silver domestically.

The Royal Mint handled production, as it did for numerous post-colonial independence issues of the 1960s Commonwealth transitions.