Published: Sunday, 21 January 2024 – Marco Caroni
ROME (numismatics) – Too many issues, many of which are unattractive, too high circulations and crazy prices at the counter. Here the tiring work of previous years has been squandered
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We had been easy prophets but we had warned: 2023 for Italian numismatics was a year of regression. The year of the recoil.
We wrote it in December 2022, in unsuspecting times, when we took a look at what would have been issued in the year just ended: and we were right, because it was a disaster.
Not so much in sales for the IState Mint printing institute that perhaps some pieces even managed to “sold out”, when for a market literally overwhelmed by one excessive production in emissions, exaggerated in print runs, insane in sales prices to the public at the counters in Piazza Verdi. With these premises it was difficult to expect anything better.
READ S & M – It will be a 2023 still with too many Italian coins (READ!) and with excessive circulations. In 2022 only Dante held out
If in 2022 there had been at least Dante (with Purgatory) it had held its own together with a couple of other pieces appreciated by the market (but what a blow for the Panini stickers and for Paolo Rossi), in 2023 very few were saved. Maybe a couple, even throwing the same thing in between Dante (Paradise) for which – despite the announced dramatic increase in sales prices – at least the circulation had been maintained.
Male, the commemorative 2 euros went very badly: also bad, overall, the 3 different coinages for the 100 years of the Air Force. Monstrous print runs and prices that effectively collapsed any possible leap forward in valuations and therefore in interest. Bad too Ryder Cupwhich is also the first Italian curved coin (years after the one for US baseball): practically, almost no one was saved except perhaps for the 5 euros “Environmental protection” which, thanks to the bizarre rhomboidal shape and the silver-copper combination, combined with a serious circulation of 4 thousand examples, has made itself seen a bit. But what was the point of increasing the price and circulation of, for example, the divisional proof?
There’s no point in shooting at the red cross triptych by Diabiolik or on very expensive Armaniwhich at least are beautiful: it is useless to mention the Raffaella Carrà or him Endangered animals. We are in the deep red. On the market these coins, like the ones mentioned in 2022, they are conveniently priced below. That is to say that those who bought them, perhaps in duplicate, are willing to lose money in order to get rid of them. Truly the worst possible indicator.
Not counting the coins in “extraordinary issue“, as if those already planned were few: it is therefore impossible to expect miracles from the 5 euro for i 75 years of the Senate (produced in the bizarre edition of 6098 pieces, equal to the number of mandates of the senators: too many, in every sense) and the senseless “Demographic development“. Was it really necessary?
So all the tiring work was squandered in 2 years done in the previous ones in which a gradual reduction in circulation, a certain propensity for novelties and some good choices had made it gain ground. But we fear that before we see cases like that of again 5 euro Margherita pizzafrom the 5 euros 50 years since the moon landingor even the madness of 5 euro endangered animals “Tiger”a lot of water will pass under the bridge, a lot.
At the moment there don’t seem to be any sensational innovations on the horizon for 2024: we will go from rectangular coins (which so far have had very little, very little success) dedicated to Puccini and Turandot to the triptych (again cupronickel and then silver) for the cartoonist Benito Jacovitti. The commemorative 2 euros will be dedicated to Financial police it’s at Rita Levi Montalcini. We will only discover the rest by living.
There is probably still time to try to limit the damage and start to reverse the post-covid madness: but we need more reasonable prices that allow not only to raise cash but also to increase interest and possible revaluations of the coins. And shorter runs. And this last aspect appears to be the simplest to work on. Simple but indispensable. Because the risk of flop is around the corner.
2024-01-21 20:27:50
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