Questions from a fellow lurker about Italy

Agflyer

I rarely write to this forum, but I do frequent it as a lurker quite often. I'm going to Cortina, Italy in a couple of weeks for a ski trip and it happens that I have lots of coins from Italy from before they changed to the Euro. Can I still use these coins in commerce or are they pretty much worthless? If I can use them, what is the exchange rate for Lira these days? I also hope to buy some coins while there, but everyone has cautioned me to be aware of fakes. I do, however, have this crazy dream that I'm going to find U.S. coins with rare varieties, but I guess that's for a different forum. . . Thanks in advance for your responses.

1jester

Italy uses the Euro, as do most European countries.

Please don't assume those old Liras are worthless. Most old coins were melted en masse, and therefore you might have some quite valuable coins in that old change. Cladking will surely be around to comment on this!

cladking

Many of the European coins are still redeemable but have to be presented at specific banks.

I redeemed almost all mine (except uncs of course) because the cost of letting them expire
was too great. They were gone through and the best examples pulled out (especially the
low denominations), but the bulk were unceremoniously shipped off for cash. The coins were
made in the tens and hundreds of millions and some will be intentionally saved out as souv-
enirs. Many more will be mislaid or forgotten until the redemption period expires. Coins made
in this number in typical condition from wealthy countries are unlikely to gain much premium in
the foreseeable future.

Many of these recently demonetized coins, though, are quite scarce in uncirculated condition.
Few people have bothered with coins made in the last half of the 20th century so the coins
were never set aside. Those which have been in circulation for decades are now in very low
grades or already melted. With some of these there are few uncs, few XF's, and even few F's.
...And then a very large percentage of the entire issue was melted. It is these which may well be
worth the cost of hanging on to.

It is hardly impossible that typical condition coins from Euro countries will become valuable, but
the cost of retaining these coins as speculation isn't a great deal lower than acquiring uncircu-
lated examples which are unquestionably scarce.

Italian coins are extremely neglected but wear extremely well in circulation so there are many
nice AU's of most dates readily available. Exchange rates were frozen near the time of the intro-
duction of the Euro and should be around 2100L to the dollar if anything is still good.

Agflyer

Thank you for your posts. I'll have to sort through my coins and see if I have any uncircs. I've got literaly thousands of coins from about 150 different countries (most 20th century), but I really don't know much about any of them. I guess it's time for me to pick up a Krause! Thanks again.

CIVITAS

Italian coin can be redeemed through certain exchange banks until 2011. Paper money is exchangeable indefinitely (at this point at least).

The Lire/Euro rate was fixed at 1,936.27 Lire/Euro.

There may be restrictions as far as what banks will take your coins, which denominations, how they are packaged/sorted and how often you can exchange and in what amounts. I'm not certain what these are (if any).