100 Lire Cassa di Risparmio di Biella

The Cassa di Risparmio di Biella was one of dozens of northern Italian savings banks that issued low-denomination emergency token notes — fedi di credito — during the severe coin shortage of the mid-1970s. Italy's small-change crisis was acute enough that telephone tokens, candy, and postage stamps were routinely used as substitutes for coins in everyday transactions. These bank-issued notes were a more formal solution, but their legal status was always ambiguous, and the Bank of Italy tolerated rather than sanctioned them.

The Turati Lombardi press in Milan handled much of this emergency printing work across multiple issuing institutions. The fiscal stamp is what gave individual notes their validated, transaction-ready status.