BERLIN: Thieves stole a gold coin with a face value of US$1 million (S$1.39 million) and weighing 100 kilograms from Berlin’s Bode Museum on Monday (Mar 27).
According to German media, the stolen coin is the “Big Maple Leaf”, a commemorative piece issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007.
The coin, 53 centimetres across and three centimetres thick, features the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on one side and maple leaves on the other.
Bode Museum gave the face value of the coin at US$1 million, although the market price of 100 kilograms of gold is around US$4 million.
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German police said on Twitter that the robbers likely used a ladder found at a nearby rail track to break into the museum at around 3:30 am (9.30am Singapore time).
Suburban rail traffic was interrupted as investigators combed the area for clues.
The Bode Museum, located on the German capital’s UNESCO-listed Museum Island, houses one of the world’s biggest coin collections.
The holding includes 102,000 coins from ancient Greece and about 50,000 Roman coins.
The museum says the coin is in the Guinness Book of Records for its purity of 999.99/1000 gold.
