From a numismatic point of view, the use of money, which sprang up in the middle of the seventh century BC, in Asia Minor, during the reign of Lydia, and in the Greek colonies of the Ionian sea, can be considered as the consequence of a long evolution of exchange means, generally identified by various utensils like tripods, bronze axes and iron spears, known in Greek as obeloi. Before the introduction of coins exchange took place in kind, depending on the type of goods, especially with regard to livestock (in Latin pecus) from which the word pecunia (money) derives, with its immediate meaning still alive in our modern-day languages. Coins usually identify races and tell of their history via their technical and artistic features.

"Gela, Sicily (Italy)"

"Italian coin: £500"

This was the case of the Lira which ratified the unification of Italy, replacing more than two hundred and fifty local coins, and this is still the case today with the Euro, for which VERRES SpA has played a key role as the concrete means of the final launching of a united Europe. The consolidated inherited and developed know-how, starting from the perfecting in the area of COGNE of a stainless ferritic steel known as Acmonital, especially designed for the Italian Mint, had led to the founding of VERRES SpA, a company in partnership with the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato (I.P.Z.S.)- State Typography and Mint, aimed at achieving maximum synergy between a qualitatively constant production of semi-processed mintage products and the minting of the coins themselves.

It is not by chance therefore, that the bimetallic coins, an important innovation covered by an international patent and used as the VERRES SpA logo, was designed and produced in Italy for the first time in the world.