BULGARIAN COIN 5 levs World football championship 2006, 2003 proof

KM #
Year of issue: 2003
Nominal value: 5 levs
Weight: 28.28 g
Type of metal: Ag 925
Diameter: 38.61 mm
Mintage: 50 000
Edge: serrated
Proof.

General information: 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 in 1879 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 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 in into a hundred stotinkas. Inspiration came from the Latin Monetary Union, with three types of coins 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.

In various historical periods dependent on the issuing institution, the BNB or the Ministry of Finance placed Bulgarian coins 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.

In their own way Bulgarian coins celebrate the times 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. A total of 370 coins were issued for the period 1881 - 2007.