Tuesday, December 6, 2011

An Insight Into Italian Coins

By Fabio DeMartino


Gold is a precious metal and has always been a symbol of wealth for people. As it is very soft in its original form, it is used after combining it with another base metal chemically to make an alloy. Generally copper is used as the base metal, but other metals like silver are also used.

Alloys of gold are much stronger and have great worth for the reason of containing gold. In history, these alloys have been the choice coinage metal. When people begun producing coins, they chose to use gold over other metals and this still occurs.

For many years, Italy appeared to have many provinces governed by different bodies due to the numerous types of coins used as currency. Although there were a lot of coins, the "fiorino d'oro" gold coins which were the currency used in Florence, were most likely the first coins manufactured and widely utilized in Europe.

History approximates that the invention of first Italian coin made of gold was in 1252. This coin had an estimated gold content of 3.5 grams. The other popular gold coins used in Italy as currency apart from the fiorino d'oro were the ducat, sovranos as well as the scudo d'oro.

Italy started using the currency Lira from 1861. Gold lira are presently a collector's item, as Italy has been utilizing the Euro from 2000 onwards.

The Italian gold coins have now reached the status of being a collectors' item. People purchase and sell these coins and investors take them as safe investments due to the increasing value of gold. The older the coin, the bigger is its size and more is its gold content which increases its price and vice versa.

There are a lot of Italian gold coins for sale even now. The average cost of the gold coins pre-dating the 1900's can be safely quoted as more than 2000 Euros, while those after 1900s have an average price of 1500 Euros.

The Italian goldsmiths are efficient and have good craftsmanship when it comes to duplicating Italian gold coins to make jewelry because they combine the designs with their heritage. They use gold coins to make items such as bracelets, tiepins, pendants, necklaces, earrings as well as cuff-links.

There prices start from $200 and reach to extravagant heights, depending on your choice of design and the amount of actual gold utilized in it. These beautifully designed gifts are a nice reminder of the Italian history.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment