ITALIAN TELEPHONE TOKENS Öffentlichkeit Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 5, Number 38, September 22, 2002, Article 10
ITALIAN TELEPHONE TOKENS
Christopher Rivituso writes: "I recently read that phone box
tokens in Italy freely circulated as money and that it was not
at all uncommon to receive them in change. Can anybody
confirm this and tell me how much the gettone were worth?
What is the situation now in Italy, with the euro in circulation?
Are the gettone still circulating? If so, what is their current
worth?Actually, I would imagine that there are less and less gettone,
even before the euro came into circulation, seeing that
card-only phoneboxes have proliferated in Europe. I'm sure
that Italy is no exception."[Until I read Christopher's note, I was unfamiliar with the
term "Gettone", which I assume is Italian for "Token".
A quick web search turned up some information and
illustrations of the tokens and telephones which accepted
them (in both English and Italian):http://users.pullman.com/fjstevens/tokens/Gettone/
http://www.iltrogolo.it/attila/coins/200_lire_gettone.htmhttp://www.telecomitalia.it/gruppo/unsecolo_distoria/archivio_storico/index.asp
http://news2000.libero.it/editoriali/6131.jhtmlTelephone tokens came up earlier this year in an item about
Howard Daniel III's research (see The E-Sylum v5#35,
September 3, 2002) Since we have subscribers in Italy,
perhaps someone can give us an update on the use and
collecting of these tokens. -Editor]- 2002-09-22
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