Hi everyone,
for almost 3 weeks my fianceθ and I have been travelling through Tuscany. We drove all the way from Berlin down to Italy and had an amazing time.
Due to the fact that I was the one who got our car through the serpentines in the Chianti area I even was allowed to spend an unsual large amount of time for browsing through stores selling coins and other antiquities
This was the first time we used Airbnb for booking our accomodations and everything went really well.
So now lets come to the coin part:
Our first stop was a beautiful small house in the Casentino area with an amazing view towards the city of Poppi. Our hosts were a lovely elderly couple and when I brought up that I was intersted in coins the husband invited me to show some Italian pre-Euro coinage that he just kept.
In the end, he gave me quite some nice coins as a present. Among them are a bunch of commemorative 500 and 200 Lire coins but also some older types that were minted around the 50s.
After spending 4 days in the Casentino valley we headed to our next stop - the City of Arezzo. When we booked this accomodation we already knew, that on the first weekend of every month a huge antiquities market is held in the city.
This market is just awesome for everyone that loves old stuff. I'd guess that there were about 300 dealers and of course some of them sold coins. I tried not to buy from professional coins dealers and instead looked for other dealers that had just a few unsorted coins to sell.
After the weekend I ended up with having bought 6 coins.
The first three coins I got for 10 :
Albania (occupied by Italy) - 0.10 Lek 1940
Kingdom of Italy - 1 Centesimo 1915
Kingdom of Italy - 2 Centesimi 1910
Especially the 2 Centesimi coins is awesome because it is rather scarce and in terms of condition pretty good above the average condition of this type.
The other three coins that I got on the market were in a huge pile of unsorted coins. It took about 10 minutes to find something nice and here is what I got for 11 :
20 Centesimi (token for a exposition in Milano in 1906)
Roman Republic - As from Traianus
1916
Buffalo nickel
The 20 Centesimi token is pretty scarce and probably will not remain in my collection but all in all, I was quite happy with what I got.
After 5 days in Arezzo we headed to the Chianti region where we've been in a very nice place. Anyway, the 4 days we've spent we mainly enjoyed wine and food. There also were not really places where you could have bought any coins.
BUT: Then came our last stop - Florence. We stayed there for 3 days and I already knew that there were some coin dealers in the city centre plus a flea market only a 30 minute walk from our appartment.
Here is what I got from the coin dealers:
These 5 coins for 1 :
100 Lire Vatican City
50 Centesimi Italy 1941
0.20 Lek Albania (occupied by Italy) 1939
500 Lire San Marino 1990
20 Centesimi Italy 1943
The next coin shop brought me 1 coin, bought for 1,50 :
1 Lira Italy 1939
The last one got a bit more expensive then:
5 Lek Albania (occupied by Italy) 1939 - bought for 18
Then there was the flea market on which I found a huge collection of banknotes, all sold for 5 a piece but I got a discount when taking 8 notes so I only paid 36 for these, unfortunally including 2 fake notes from Germany but also 5, 10 and 20 Swiss Francs
When I told the lady at the shop that I also collected coins the told me to come back the day after because she had plenty of commemorative Italian coins, minted in silver.
So we went back there again on the next day and this time there was an old man with a heavy coin album - filled only with 200, 500 and 1000 Lire coins from Italy, Vatican City and San Marino. All Italian coins were 5 each, the rest 10 each.
So I got these 6 Italian 500 Lire coins, 3 of them proof issues for only 30 .
And then there was this beautifully toned proof San Marino 500 Lire coin from 1990 which I only took because of its tone for 10 .
So that's basically what I got within the last 3 weeks :) (Please excuse the bad photo quality).
Posted 09/16/2016 06:59 am
