72-year-old Umberto Libassi, a resident of Alta Valsassina in Lombardy, made an extraordinary discovery while organizing mementos of his deceased parents. In an old chest, among theater costumes and scripts, he found a bank document confirming a deposit from years ago. As the Italian news agency Agi noted, “sometimes life can resemble the script of a theater play, full of twists and treasures hidden under a layer of dust.”
In 1963, Libassi's parents, theater actors, deposited 1,000 lire in a savings bank in Trieste for their son's future. In those days, this amount was enough to buy two or three newspapers, two liters of milk or a cheap lunch. The document confirming the payment was placed in the family chest, where it lay forgotten for years.
Only a recent move motivated Libassi to sort out his family heirlooms. Among the theater props, he found a yellowed piece of paper that piqued his curiosity. He decided to check whether the document had any value.
Libassi turned to the Rome association for the defense of consumer rights for help. Experts confirmed that thanks to capitalization, accrued interest and currency conversion, the original amount of one thousand lire, corresponding to the value of five coffees in a bar from over 60 years ago, is now approximately PLN 50,000. euro.
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Moreover, the right to recover the deposit should not be time-barred because the owner was unaware of its existence all this time. Legal actions are currently underway to enable the payment of these funds.
