I will never understand why Italy stamped the date along with Repubblica Italiana on the rim of its otherwise beautiful 500 lire piece with the Renaissance woman on the obverse and Columbus' caravels on the reverse.
"We did not really have any space left" was obviously not the reason. Especially as the mint mark is easily visible ... Then again, apart from collectors, nobody would really care about what year a coin is from. Older Spanish coins (until about 35 years ago) have a production year usually "hidden" in a star, the US Presidential Dollars have the date on the edge (OK, those coins do not actually circulate), and the current coins from Azerbaijan for example have no date at all. Christian
A beautiful coin and a "must have" for a World Coin Collection. I have 2, 1968, mintage 100,000, and 1969, mintage 310,000. What is strange is the 1967 has a mintage of 2,480,000 and the 1970, 1,140,000. There's a gap in issue dates from 1970 to 1980 with very low mintage numbers from that point. Values are all across the board and don't seem to be consistent with the mintage numbers. Some years, the 1968 and 1969, for example were only available in the mint sets. 1968 1969
I knew about the Spanish coins because I have a Francisco Franco 100 Pesetas dated 1966 but ensconced in the two stars you can see 19 on the left and 70 on the right. I don't understand why they did that and why the Italians did that on a circulating silver 500 Lire coin.
Here's my 1997 example. I bought it because it was the year I graduated high school -- even though the date is on the edge. It's graded MS67 by PCGS. I then had the chance to get another, the 1994 (lowest mintage of the MS dates). That one is graded MS69 by NGC.
Personally I would have liked it better if the words wrapped around the bottom and the mintmark on top. Its still a pretty coin though, haven't gotten around to adding one to my collection.
