I have in my possession several bits of currency (French Francs, Italian Lire, Spanish Pesetas, etc) that were replaced by the Euro. Should the Euro fail and the member countries go back to their respective curriencies, will these “old” instruments have value as currency?
It would depend on how the Euro fails and what the countries decide to do with their national currency. I doubt old money would be taken at face value, since new currency is likely to be issued.
Nope. They’ve been demonetized, so they’re just chunks of metal or pieces of paper now.
Also, even if those countries reverted to francs, liras, etc…, those currencies wouldn’t revert to the value they had before the Euro. In all likelihood, the reborn lira, peseta… would all be worth the same as the euro (at the beginning of course, after that they would obviously fluctuate independantly), so your old 500 liras bill would definitely not represent the same value as 500 “reborn liras”.
Finally (contrarily to the USA, I believe) no european currency kept being legal tender forever, AFAIK. Even before the euro, I couldn’t have used an old bill that had been since replaced by a new design. If the change had occured long enough ago, I couldn’t even have it exchanged by the central bank.
Not quite correct. First, it’s different from country to country. Generally, not all countries did re-design very often; secondly, not all countries devalued the old bills. Germany, for example, has no limit on old Marks (old or new design), you just are required to go to a central bank for exchange (and there’s quite a number of Marks still out there, which people keep finding).
Here is the exchange calender for old currency into the Euro. For older national editions - exchanging old Pounds into newer design, or old Francs into new - you’d need to look at the central bank website of each country in question.
OK. Sorry for my mistaken statements.