ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the multifaceted investment strategies of our second-hand dealers. The venture capital that some of them put in immovable assets (especially land and vineyards) testify to the ambitions (even by the poorest among second-hand dealers) when they managed to acquire modest capital, to buy strips of land and little fields in the countryside to secure some form of financial stability, a second income, or even an aura of nobility to their family and descendants. However, if diversification in their use of capital often expressed itself by favouring a type of investment linked to the traditional possession of the safe haven par excellence (urban properties and, above all, land), there was no lack of credit or financial speculation. Of course, the emergence of a savings culture among the rigattieri can also be detected in investments in shares of the Monte comune (the public debt) and Monte delle Doti, which had been founded to favour the amassing of alms for girls and young people of Florence and its countryside and district. Both, but especially the second, provided appropriate interest rates during the Quattrocento.
