Bulgarian Coins

Bulgarian coins are built around one of the oldest national symbols in the Balkans: the rampant lion, documented on Bulgarian coinage and heraldry since the medieval Second Empire. What sits above and around that lion has changed with nearly every political upheaval — a crown under the kingdom, a communist star under the People's Republic, a simplified shield under the modern republic. The lion stays. Everything else is negotiable.
 
The lev has been Bulgaria's currency unit since 1881, but the lev itself has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. The first lev lasted through two world wars. The second lev, introduced under communist rule, survived barely a decade before a punishing redenomination replaced it. The third lev endured from 1962 through the fall of communism and into the chaotic 1990s, only to be redenominated again in 1999 when hyperinflation forced yet another reset. Each version left behind coins struck in different metals at different mints — brass, aluminum, copper-nickel, steel — a material record of what the economy could afford at the time.
 
Bulgarian coinage was struck at facilities ranging from the Leningrad Mint under Soviet direction to the Bulgarian Mint in Sofia, with earlier kingdom-era pieces produced at mints across Europe. The Cyrillic script on every coin sets Bulgarian money apart visually from most of its European neighbors, and the wheat motifs that dominated the communist-era designs give way to different iconography depending on which Bulgaria struck them.