When a husband and wife opened that drawer, they never imagined a small treasure could be hidden inside. Giambattista Serra, 73, from Capoterra, picked up those two pieces of paper, looked at them, and understood: they were two savings bonds issued by the Post Office in 1938 and 1970. The second was old, worth 100,000 lire; the other, worth 100 lire, was antique. Then the question arose: could they be worth a lot today? Serra did some research and now hopes to cash in on a substantial sum.
Years ago
The 100-lire note was issued before the outbreak of World War II; the 100,000-lire note was issued in the year the Beatles recorded their last album before breaking up and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died.
The starting point is a house in Santu Lussurgiu that Serra inherited from his aunt Caterina Pira and the subsequent inventory of the belongings left by the elderly woman who passed away on the cusp of 100 years old. Then came the incredible discovery. "It was my wife who found the bonds," he explains. "They were kept alongside some old pesos from the time my great-grandfather emigrated to Argentina. My first thought was to frame them because they are beautiful, then I decided to go to the post office to ask if they still had any value despite the passage of time. There, however, they told me I couldn't cash them."
Experts
Unconvinced by the answer, Serra did some research online and discovered that in similar circumstances, those who had inherited old savings bonds had managed to obtain something. The retiree thus turned to some lawyers with expertise in the field, "who explained to me that, despite many years having passed, the bonds are still valid because I recently took possession of them. I never imagined that in that old house, long closed because my aunt was a resident of a retirement home in Bonarcado for fourteen years, there could be a small treasure: now I hope to be able to convert those old lire bonds into euros."
The lawyers
Francesco Marino, a lawyer with the Associazione Italia, a team of lawyers who, among other activities, also handle the recovery of old savings bonds, quantifies the hypothetical value of the two bonds: "The 1938 bond is estimated to be worth around €25,000; the 1970 bond, despite being worth a hundred times as much, could fluctuate between €8,000 and €10,000. This is because over time, legal interest rates, especially after the 1960s, have plummeted, and their valuation has dropped dramatically. The value of these bonds is not calculated using a mathematical conversion, but rather by considering their purchasing power at the time. One might think that, given the passage of time, the possibility of collecting them has faded, but in this case, that's not the case: they were just discovered, and the holder was unaware of their existence." Therefore, "the first step was to file a direct appeal with the Rome Post Office: as has happened in the past, we are confident we will be able to recover the sum owed to our client."
Ivan Murgana
