Dear friends - numismatists and fans of medieval coinage,
Welcome to the first and only online catalog of Bulgarian medieval coins in the world.
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Our mission is to put together the whole range of Bulgarian medieval coinage: all known types of coins of Bulgarian kings and rulers as well as any other coins, minted across the Bulgarian lands from the second half of the 11-th century to the first decades of the 15-th century.
We have also included a number of coin types and variations that we have found in the process of compiling our collections. Some of those coin types have not been published in the numismatic literature at all or they have only been published in Bulgarian editions.
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The distribution of the numismatic material and the assigning of some coin types essentially differ from the views, imposed by the traditional numismatics, but fully reflect our views and conclusions resulting from our work with thousands of Bulgarian medieval coins. Of course we may change our views if a newly found numismatic material or evidence disproves them.
We have also come up with a new, unique classification of Bulgarian coins, claiming maximum objectivity and rejecting some hypothetical attributions. The new system of classification is open to the newly found coin types and variations without any need to change the numeration of the coin types already described.
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We sincerely hope that this new classification will serve you as a reference guide in the future and will give you the opportunity to organize your collections of Bulgarian medieval coins.
In this part of the site we have mainly presented coins from the Orthodoxcoins collection as well as coins from our friends' collections all over the world. As for some unique editions, known in 1 or 2 copies, as well as for types still not available in our collections, we have used photos from certain Bulgarian scientific publications.
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We express our sincere thanks to Mr. Angel Radoushev and Mr. Constantine Dochev for their consent to publish pictures of Bulgarian and Byzantine coins, printed in some of their publications. Coin types, described for the first time, have been photographed, and line-drawing have been made up by Orthodoxcoins.
The rarity of coin types represented in this site reflects our views and is based upon the information we have about the specimens available to this date. This information is obviously subject to continuous corrections as a result of discovering new finds.
| Symbol |
Coin type exemplars known so far |
Rarity |
| U |
1 |
Unique |
| R 10 |
2-5 |
Extremely rare |
| R 9 |
6-20 |
| R 8 |
21-100 |
Very rare |
| R 7 |
101-250 |
| R 6 |
251-500 |
Rare |
| R 5 |
501-1000 |
| R 4 |
1001-2000 |
Common |
| R 3 |
2001-3000 |
| R 2 |
3001-5000 |
| R 1 |
5000+ |
We do not publish prices of the separate coin types because the purpose of our project is to make the Bulgarian medieval coins popular and to give the whole numismatic world a chance to correctly attribute these beautiful, interesting and varied coins for the first time. We shall be happy if, as a result of our work, the Bulgarian medieval coinage gets its due and worthy place, and along with the impressive collections of late Byzantine coins, new rich collections of Bulgarian coins are created.
ORTHODOXCOINS
