Obol - Béla IV

Béla IV's reign was defined almost entirely by the Mongol invasion of 1241–42, which depopulated large swaths of Hungary and forced the king to flee to Dalmatia. The reconstruction effort that followed reshaped Hungarian coinage administration, with minting rights increasingly delegated to regional authorities — a decentralization that accounts for the considerable die variation seen across issues attributed to this reign.

At 0.19 g, these obols were among the smallest silver denominations in circulation and were frequently lost rather than hoarded, which explains why surviving examples in clean condition are scarcer than the broader Béla IV series suggests.