10 Leva 15th Winter Olympic Games

Bulgaria issued this coin ahead of the 1988 Calgary Winter Games as part of a broader Eastern Bloc pattern of using Olympic commemoratives to generate hard currency from Western collectors — the actual domestic circulation of these pieces was negligible. The .640 fineness is notably low for a silver commemorative of this period, a deliberate cost-reduction choice that placed it below the .925 or .900 standard used by most contemporary Western mints issuing similar Olympic series.