Who doesn’t love Nutella? IPZS issues a trio of silver coins celebrating 75 years of the company that makes it.

It was in Alba, Italy, back in 1946 that Pietro Ferrero first sold a batch of Pasta Granduja. Derived from Granduja, a mix of chocolate and hazelnut that itself was the result of Napoleon’s blockade of British goods (the main supplier of cocoa), it morphed into Nutella in 1964. Made by the Ferrero Corporation to this day, it has enabled the company to be the second biggest chocolate and confectionary company in the world today, with sales in excess of $11 billion per annum. Still a privately held company, it remains under the Ferrero family, and produces around 365,000 tonnes of Nutella every year.

An Italian icon, it has joined Vespa and Olivetti in getting a set of three coloured coins from the Italian mint, IPZS, as part of their Italian Excellence range. We really like the Vespa issue, as it portrayed the scooter as part of the chic lifestyle that many remember the sixties to be, but how do you portray a jar of Nutella to look good?

The truth is, you don’t really. This has a jar of the spread on one face and an image of a factory facade on the other. There’s no flair or style here, and it looks more like a product advert than something inherently collectable. There are three variants, a series signature, each with a different coloured highlight. The red, white and green versions ape the colours of the Italian flag, which worked really well on the Vespa coins, but seems forced in this case. We sympathise with the artist chosen for this project, who was undoubtedly constrained by the nature of the subject. At the end of the day, it’s a jar of spread…

The coins are struck in 18 grams of sterling 0.925 silver and carry a €5 denomination. They can be purchased individually, so you can pick your favourite colour, or as a set of three. There are 10,000 of each individual variant being produced, with a further 5,000 of each colour packed together in sets. Packaging remains similar in all cases, and looks well done. Overall, a disappointing issue that simply has an uninteresting subject. This one has been available for a while.