When I was down visiting my folks last week my dad pulled out a ziplck bag full of foreign coins and was like, here you go are any of these worth anything.
This is a bag I have looked through before , probably about 6 or 7 years ago. It's just regular coins from their world travels after they retired. I did go though it pretty closely back then. In fact I remember texting with
@monsterjamgold about them. He's quite knowledgeable about European coins and saved me a lot of time looking up coins that are only worth face value...in Europe!
As I said, my dad handed me the bag so I looked though again quickly and spotted this old coin that I quite like.
An Italian 100 Lira coin from 1959. I like the toning that looks like it's been chipped off just from other coins hitting this one...maybe in a pocket or something.
This coin has an interesting metal composition, it's 81.75% Iron, 18.25% Chromium, which is called, Acmonital.
Here is a little bit about Acmonital alloy:
An alloy of stainless steel. Coins in stainless steel were first struck in Italy in 1939, in both a magnetic steel and nonmagnetic alloy (1939-43). The alloy is hard, die wear is high, and only low relief designs can be struck in coining presses (but Italy had experience in striking a hard nickel alloy since 1919). Its use in 1939 was a wartime alloy , but an acmonital alloy was resumed for Italian coins in 1954 and used continuously afterwards.
I can confirm it is magnetic, I can barely lift it off my Neodymium magnet :)
