Articles on the coins
What the coins from Tarnovo tell: how they were struck, what they were worth, what each ruler issued, how money moved through the city in the 12th–14th centuries, and where they were found. After Konstantin Dochev's book on the coins and currency of Tarnovo.
How the coins were made
Most of what we know about the Tarnovo mint comes from the coins themselves: their shape, the marks of the dies, the overstrikes and the clipped edges.
Money and value
Medieval Bulgaria reckoned in the gold hyperpyron it inherited from Byzantium and paid in billon, copper and silver.
Each ruler's coinage
The rulers who struck coins, from the imitations of Kaloyan's day to Ivan Shishman's last light silver. Weights in the tables are averages, in grams.
Money in Tarnovo, 1186–1393
Dochev examined 13,400 coins of 326 types from the capital and divides its money into three periods.
Coin finds in Tarnovo
Excavations in the old capital have turned up more than 13,400 medieval coins. Alongside the tsars' own issues are coins struck from Venice to Nicaea and from the Golden Horde to the Peloponnese, and each one is a trace of the trade that reached Tarnovo. The lines follow Konstantin Dochev's map of those links.