1988 Italy 500 Lire - Summer Olympics Seoul - Proof Of Authenticity

Took some days to do offline stuff

In the past week, I've been heaving some health issues as well as offline needing my attention more than online. I felt too drained in the evenings to get a post out so I just let it for what it was and hoped the next day would be better. I had the pictures for this coin ready days ago, while the coin arrived a week ago. It's another one of these purchases where I sold some second hand stuff on a website and re-invested that into some silver.

Italian seller

It comes from the same seller in Italy as where I bought these other Italian coins recently, one of them being in honour of the numismatic agency opening in 1975. If you haven't seen it yet, here's the link to the post. Everything went smooth with this seller and the prices seemed good as well, so I figured let's dig into the sellers items before hunting for something else as the budget wasn't that big.

Let's see what I purchased

The seller had coins ranging from a few euros until in the 30 euros or so and I was particularly looking for one where the mintage wasn't as high as some of the others and/or in good state. I didn't particularly look for a special design.

This 1988 500 Lire coin in honours of the summer Olympics in Seoul comes in a box that still looks great considering it's from 1988 and I love the little proof of authenticity inside, I think it's made from parchment.

It's been forever since I held that in my hands so I may be wrong, but I don't think so. More about that part later, let's first check the design of the coin.

Summer Olympics in Seoul

As I mentioned the coin was made to honour the summer Olympics in Seoul and comes in two different mintages:

source

This is the 13000 mint and to me it seemed like a nice opportunity to add another Italian coin to my collection as I've been drawn to these so it seems.

On the observe there's a face of a women with the Olympic torch and the flames have the shape of a dragon, nice touch, right? There's also the big Star of the Republic Star, I don't know why they write that with capitals on Numista but I better just do the same, maybe that's important lol.

The lettering says "REPUBLICA ITALIANA COLANERI", it's Latin for "Italian Republic Colaneri".

The engraver is Maria Carmela Colaneri.

And then we have the reverse where we can see two female gymnasts, the five Olympic rings and two olive branches. Apparently the centre decoration is Korean, which I read on Numista. There's also the date, mintmark and value, which is 500 Lire.

Last, Lettering in relief, which is Latin says: "REPVBBLICA ITALIANA"
which translates to: "Italian Republic".

Source

Proof of authenticity

So there's also this nice little book inside the box, the proof of authenticity:

As I mentioned it seems to be parchment..

My Italian is a bit rusty but I will ask my good friend the translator soon to read it properly as I'm curious what is written inside such a booklet.

I hope you liked my new Italian collector's item and wishing you the best weekend!

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All pictures above are my own unless stated otherwise (the screenshots) which are mentioned above.

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