Boris III ascended the Bulgarian throne in 1918 following his father Ferdinand I's forced abdication after the catastrophic Second Balkan War and World War I defeats. The 1923 issue landed in a politically explosive year: in June, Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski was overthrown and murdered in a coup backed by the Military League and IMRO, ending the Agrarian government and installing Aleksandar Tsankov. Coinage continued through the upheaval with minimal interruption — the machinery of the mint outlasting any particular government.
The aluminium-bronze alloy used here, unusual in its aluminium-dominant formulation, reflects postwar metal economics in a country stripped of resources and saddled with reparations under the 1919 Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Boris III ascended the Bulgarian throne in 1918 following his father Ferdinand I's forced abdication after the catastrophic Second Balkan War and World War I defeats. The 1923 issue landed in a politically explosive year: in June, Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski was overthrown and murdered in a coup backed by the Military League and IMRO, ending the Agrarian government and installing Aleksandar Tsankov. Coinage continued through the upheaval with minimal interruption — the machinery of the mint outlasting any particular government.
The aluminium-bronze alloy used here, unusual in its aluminium-dominant formulation, reflects postwar metal economics in a country stripped of resources and saddled with reparations under the 1919 Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine.