11,000 ancient coins stolen from Bulgarian museum

The Veliko Tarnovo museum was robbed Thursday, February 2nd. 11,000 ancient coins were stolen, including 230 gold coins.

The best report comes from standartnews.com:

"The brazen robbery took place on Thursday night,
police sources announced. The thieves acted like
in a crime thriller -- they eliminated three alarm
systems and unlocked two doors before breaking
into the museum safety-vault.

"The most valuable archaeological collections are
kept there. Two safes, size of a wardrobe, were
broken open and robbed. For now, only one thing is
clear -- fortunately the thieves haven't touched
the gold treasures of Hotnitsa and Golemany. 'The
ring of Tsar Kaloyan is not among the stolen items,
too,' director of the museum Hristo Haritonov said.
Experts are counting the ancient gold coins one by
one to find out what's missing. Yesterday, all the
collections dating back from the Middle Ages and the
period of Bulgarian Revival were checked up.
Obviously the thieves were not interested in them.

novinite.com said the coins include 75 Philip and Alexander tetradrachms, 4000 Roman denarii, and 17th century jewelry from Arbanasi. The weight of the stolen jewelry is estimated at 100kg. "Police official commented that the robbery was very well planned and that insiders might have helped the robbers."

Perhaps the coins will show up on eBay or at coin shows? novinite.com quoted museum officials promising a list of the missing artifacts ready on Monday Feb 6th, but if this list was prepared it hasn't been posted on the Internet.

The museum's web site is http://www.jicabg.com/museum/velikotarnovo-e.html.