Although signs of durable social hierarchy are clearly visible in the Karanovo VI / Varna period, a number of economic and symbolic traits emerge earlier and are archaeologically visible in the preceding period. The Balkan Chalcolithic is characterized both by technological innovation (copper metallurgy, gold-working, graphite decoration, lever pressure debitage, salt cake production etc.) and by upheavals of economic and social nature (regionalized production, long-distance exchange, durable and hereditary hierarchy). Cemeteries on the Bulgarian coast, and especially Varna, concentrate products in ostentatious and spectacular manner, suggesting particularly large-scale patterns of circulation. Well-established for the Varna Culture, these changes do not appear suddenly at this time. They are in fact the outcome of transformations that gradually emerged during the previous period (Karanovo V / Hamangia IV). Our aim here is to compare two special productions, very long flint blades and moulded salt cakes, both of which are well-documented in terms of sources and manufacture. The confrontation will examine modes of production, as well as the economic and/or symbolic value of the goods, within a chronological framework that is sufficiently broad to enable a dynamic approach to change in north-east Bulgaria in the first half of the 5th millennium.