I'm curious to know why these would be used instead of Italian coins. Was there something odd about their pay telephones that discouraged the use of coins? Chris
January, 1979. I believe the grooves were necessary for the token to fit through a complexly shaped opening. An even more complex system was used by hotels and restaurants in and around Chicago back in the 1930's. Most of these tokens were destroyed in the scrap drives of WWII. The numbers on the Telephonico tokens start with the year of manufacture and then the month.
As the lira became less and less valuable the telephone company simply raised the price of the tokens rather than accomodate the ever changing values and shapes of Italian coins
I got to see my telephone token collection today and saw I had 146 different of these. I have no idea how many different were made but would guess it's in the 300 range. I haven't looked at very large numbers of them but have been lucky to acquire a few collections of them.
