Bulgarian Coins

Coins have been minted in the Bulgarian lands since deepest antiquity. Later, during
the Second Bulgarian Empire, coins by Ivan Asen II and Ivan Sracimir are known. The Ottoman conquest put an end to Bulgarian minting
for more than five centuries.
Liberation found a chaotic exchange picture in Bulgaria, with a mosaic of foreign currencies circulating in local markets. The revived Bulgarian state had yet to devise a monetary system. Official accounts were kept in French francs, and due to the great gold to silver agio, remittances were in a variety of foreign silver coinage.
The Bulgarian National Bank was established on 25 January 1879 and on 4 June 1880 the Second Ordinary National Assembly voted the Coinage of the Principality (Minting Rights) Act, granting the state exclusive rights to circulate coins. The Act also established the lev (plural: levs) as the national currency, dividing it into a hundred stotinkas. Inspiration came from the Latin Monetary Union, with three types of coin being adopted: copper, silver, and gold. The very next year the first Bulgarian coins were minted in England: two, five and ten stotinkas in copper.
Silver one and two levs coins were minted in Russia in 1882, and the first gold coins (ten, 20, and 100 levs) came in 1894. The Coinage of the Principality Act of 17 April 1897 declared the golden lev as the unit of currency. The Lev and Money Supply Stabilisation Act of 1928 introduced
the gold exchange standard.
In various historical periods dependent on the issuing institution, the BNB or the Ministry of Finance placed Bulgarian coin issues with renowned European mints: those of Russia, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Belgium, Germany and Yugoslavia.
The opening of the Bulgarian Mint in 1952 relaunched indigenous minting: first of exchange coinage; and later, since 1965, of commemorative
issues. The BNB uses a variety of metals and alloys for coins: gold, silver, platinum, aluminium,
copper/nickel, and iron.
In their own way Bulgarian coins celebrate thetimes when they were minted and used in trading.
A mirror of national economic and historical development, they retain a trace of the nation’s culture and heritage.
This Catalogue lists BNB-minted actual-sized circulation coinage, without specimens, proofs and curios.
The publishers acknowledge Mr. Lyuben Angelovski’s kind assistance.