10 Leva Srebro

Bulgaria's first stable paper currency series came about under the terms of the 1879 Treaty of Berlin, which required the newly autonomous principality to establish a functioning monetary system rapidly. The Bulgarian National Bank was founded in 1879, but printed note series took years to stabilize — the 1899 Srebro issues represented a consolidation of that process, with Bradbury Wilkinson engaged precisely because their intaglio work was trusted to resist forgery in a region where counterfeit risk was a genuine policy concern.

The "Srebro" designation — meaning silver — indicated convertibility into silver coin, a promise that became increasingly difficult to honor following the financial strains of the Balkan conflicts a decade later.