20 Lire - Victor Emmanuel III

These issues span the period of Italy's most aggressive imperial expansion — the invasion and occupation of Ethiopia concluded in 1936, and by 1939 Mussolini had absorbed Albania. The regime's monetary policy during these years was perpetually strained; the Ethiopian campaign alone had cost roughly 12 billion lire and forced Italy off a modified gold standard, making silver coinage simultaneously a propaganda tool and a resource the treasury could ill afford to strike.

The .800 fineness reflects a deliberate reduction from earlier Italian silver standards, imposed as the regime balanced militarist spending against metal reserves.