A rare Party Rings biscuit with no hole Aka Holy grail of biscuits found in Suffolk. Costs only a Fiver and listed on marketplace.
Fine art, rare coins, thoroughbred horses, jewellery, and stamps. Collectables are big business. Finding that one sought-after item can be a lifetime’s quest.
Just ask Doreen Hamflett, of Great Cornard in Sudbury, Suffolk. Doreen has been collecting biscuits for 86 years! Her collection includes some of the rarest biscuits ever produced, but until last Wednesday afternoon, one biscuit, the holy grail of baked goods, had eluded her. But now her search is over.
Holy grail of biscuits
Mrs Hamflett, 97, a retired coal scuttle polisher, started hoarding collectible cookies and Holy grail of biscuits on her birthday in October 1887 when her father, Mr Hamflett – who worked for legendary biscuit magnate, Seamus Kipling – brought home a single Vienesse Whirl from the first batch ever produced at the Kipling bakery in London. This was in the days before European Union law prevented biscuit makers from baking city-specific biscuits anywhere in the world.
Hairy biscuit
And so it was that little Doreen received one of the first, ever, London-baked Vienesse Whirls as a birthday gift. That individual biscuit, which Doreen keeps in one of her father’s old tobacco tins, has been valued at £150,000 by Sotheby’s auctioneers. It would have been worth closer to £500,000 had Doreen removed the remaining tobacco from the tin first.
Soft biscuit underbelly of the Axis
Doreen told the Suffolk Gazette about some of the other rare items in her collection of over 37,000 different biscuits. “Well, after the Vienesse Whirl, the next biscuit I got was a Garibaldi. But what is special about it is that it is shaped like an Italian WWII Ansaldo L6/40 tank. It was widely produced and distributed by the Italian army during the 1940’s but, like the tanks themselves, they didn’t really get used much, so they’re not actually that hard to get hold of.”
Go on…
“Other special ones are my half-eaten packet of McVitie’s Abbey Crunch which used to belong to the Abbot of Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire. I think he was taken away for kiddie-fiddling during a tea break so they never got finished. I’m lucky to have them. And then there’s the ‘Kevin Keegan’ Jaffa Cake from the 1982 World Cup Finals Second Phase Group B match three, England V Spain. Keegan came on in the 64th minute in place of Tony Woodcock. If you watch the video of the match you can see Keegan is still digesting the Jaffa as he is substituted on. I’ve got the remnants of the actual cake with his big bite taken out of it. And a Jaffa Cake is a biscuit. Anyone who says it’s not is talking bollocks.”
I’d buy them
And what about the party ring with no hole (Holy grail of biscuits), Doreen? “Oh, that? That’s nothin’ They come up all the time. It’s worth about a fiver. I’ve got one in every colour that makes up a whole pack.” But we thought it was the holy grail of biscuits, virtually impossible to find? “No, you’re talking about the apocryphal chocolate-covered Caxton Pink ‘n’ Whites Mallow Wafers. Officially they’ve never been produced, but rumour has it there’s one six-pack in existence. Most collectors don’t believe the legend, but others ask ‘why wouldn’t they make them?’”