In standard Croatian language, there are a lot of difficulties when it comes to determining the numerals. The aim of this paper is, thus, to encompass the entire problematics regarding this word class – the criteria for distribution into a specific word class, the declension of the words, syntagmatic and predicate agreement, and the distribution of the words alongside nominals implied. Basic terms regarding numerals – number (with its three meanings: number as an abstract entity, as a word class and as a grammatical category), figure, numerousness and countability – are discussed at the beginning of the paper, and even adjectives numerous and numeral are mentioned in that sense. Numerals include all the words used for quantifying a determined quantity of entities in an extralinguistic world, which is why they are called specific quantifiers – this too is explained in a separate chapter. The attempt is made to shed light on the synchronic state of numbers in Croatian by taking a diachronic point of view on them. The basic part of the paper involves the analysis of all the numerals in Croatian language handbooks. The paper thus covers cardinal numbers and numerical nouns, numerical adjectives, and collective numerals that, with their specific morphological and semantic traits, are closely linked to the cardinal number problematics. Numerals were first analyzed in older Croatian grammar books, starting with the oldest one written by Kašić, and then even in contemporary grammar books, some of which are used in schools, as well as in dictionaries and other language handbooks. Most handbooks are full of inconsistencies, deficiencies and irregularities that this work aims to underscore, so the attempt was made to call attention to the problem not only by using the examples extracted from the linguistic handbooks, but also by using more concrete examples from Croatian computer corpora.