The first official Italian telephone tokens appeared in the first half of the 20th century and in Italy the 
STIPEL (Società Telefonica Interregionale Piemontese e Lombarda) introduced the first telephone tokens to the 
Fair of Milan in 1927. The experiment with little public phones for city telephone calls worked with tokens of 
three grooves, at the cost of 60 cts of lira. The success of the experiment made that the public phones were 
multiplied and in the years succeeding the TIMO (Società Telefoni Medio Orientale) and the TELVE (Società 
Telefonica delle Venezie) imitated the STIPEL. The TETI (Telefonica Tirrena) began from 1930 to introduce 
public phones working with coins of 50 cts. In 1935 the TETI changed to coin tokens made of aluminum and 
subsequently of zinc of the dimensions of the currency coins and without grooves. During 1945 the TETI unified 
itself to the other societies with a token with three grooves. The fifth company that coined telephone tokens 
in Italy was the SET (Società Esercizi Telefonici) in the south of Italy. The tokens issued in this period 
belong to the "first period" of Italian telephone tokens. After a telephonic reform, when monopoly incumbent 
SIP joined all the previous telephone companies, the public phones were standardized and the ESM company 
(Emilio Senesi Medaglie, Milan), began to coin regular telephone tokens for of Italy. From August of 1959 the 
ESM, added the group year-month, so could be distinguished the time. The four figures indicate the year and 
the month of coinage. As an example, 5909 indicates that the token has been coined in September 1959. This 
kind of token was coined till March 1972 with 122 different dates. Those tokens belong to the "second period". 
Subsequently, increasing the number of the public phones, also the IPM (Industria Politecnica Meridionale in 
Arzano, Naples), CMM (Costruzioni Minuterie Metalliche, Santagata Catania) and the UT (Urmet Costruzioni 
Elettrotelefoniche Turin) began to coin tokens until November 1980, last one known (IPM 8011). They coined the 
tokens with the manufacturers' logo in addition to the year/month group. In the 1970s telephone tokens ended 
up substituting standard coins of the same 200 lire denomination. In 1972 one token was manufactured for each 
Italian; by 1978 there were seven tokens produced per head of population. Between 1927 and 1980, the year when 
tokens ceased to be manufactured and the first dual-function phonecard/token telephones were introduced, a 
total of around 600 million tokens were issued in Italy. On 31 December 2001 the telephone token was finally, 
definitively taken out of circulation. 

THANKS TO Marco Fiumani!