Money is the foundation of any national economy, but also the mark of national sovereignty, reflecting the state which issues it. Its symbolic role is one of its essential characteristics, and the name of the currency its salient feature. Policymakers recognize that currencies can act as important carriers of nationalist imagery, particularly if its supply is monopolized. Money would indeed seem a perfect locus on which a state can construct an ‘ordinary nationalism’ that is all the more powerful for being part of the seemingly unremarkable fabric of daily life. In this paper, using a semiotic methodology, we shall analyse the symbols of the state produced banknotes of Albania, Turkey, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria, in an attempt to read the underlying meanings of the symbolisms selected by each state, in the geographical area of Balkans that is synonymous with nationalism, since the foundation of the modern nation-states on the region.