Thieves have staged a spectacular heist at a leading Berlin museum, making off with a gold coin worth about €3.8mn ($4.14mn) and weighing 100kg, police said yesterday.
The Canadian coin known as “Big Maple Leaf” after the country’s national symbol is one of the world’s largest gold coins.
The discovery that it was missing resulted in the authorities at one point shutting down traffic on rail lines running past the Bode Museum on the historic Museum Island in the heart of the German capital.
A ladder believed to have been used by the thieves to scale the museum’s wall and to break into the building was found on the nearby railway line.
There are only five of its kind in the world, with the coin having a face value of about C$1mn ($747,000).
However, the current gold price means that the market value of the coin could be as high as €3.74mn.
Police said the robbery occurred at 3.30am (0130 GMT) yesterday.
However, they declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding the theft or the possible perpetrators of the robbery with art experts having also joined the investigation into the theft.
Issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007, the massive coin has a diameter of 53cm and is 3cm thick.
It features a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the front and three maple leaves on the back.
The Bode Museum mainly houses sculptures, but it also has a large collection of valuable coins.
This picture taken in Vienna, Austria on June 25, 2010 shows experts of an Austrian art forwarding company holding one of the world’s largest gold coins, a 2007 C$1,000,000 ‘Big Maple Leaf’. An identical coin was stolen from Berlin’s Bode Museum yesterday.
