1 Lev Srebro

Bulgaria's postwar finances in 1920 were in serious disarray — the country had emerged from the First World War on the losing side, stripped of territory under the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine and burdened with heavy reparations. Small-denomination paper notes like this one were a direct consequence: silver coinage had effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded or melted down during years of wartime hardship, and the state needed something to fill the gap at the bottom of the monetary scale.

Waterlow & Sons produced the note in London, a routine arrangement for many smaller European states that lacked domestic printing capacity meeting international security standards. The watermark is the sole security feature — modest even by the standards of the day.