The portrait on this note is Petar Beron, born in 1799 in Kotel into a well-off family. Bulgarians remember him above all for the Fish Primer of 1824, the first modern Bulgarian primer and the starting point of secular schooling in the country. It owes its nickname to the dolphin drawn on its final pages, and beyond the alphabet it taught arithmetic, fables and natural science.

The primer was only his starting point. Beron trained as a physician and practised in Craiova, set up a trading company and used its profits to fund his research. He lived in Paris, spoke nine languages and published his major work, the Panepisteme, in French, while his money helped open Bulgarian schools. The telescope on the note nods to these scientific interests.

The note, catalogued as P112a, belongs to 1997, the year Bulgaria adopted a currency board: from 1 July 1997 the lev was fixed at 1,000 to the Deutsche Mark, so this 10,000-leva note was worth exactly ten marks. On 5 July 1999 the lev was redenominated 1000:1.

Uncirculated (UNC): never been in circulation.