Gold coin worth $4mln stolen from Berlin museum

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A gold coin worth millions of US dollars was stolen in the early hours of Monday from Berlin's Bode Museum, police in the German capital confirmed.

The coin - known as the "Big Maple Leaf" - was issued by the Canadian Royal Mint in 2007, and features an eponymous leaf on one side and Queen Elizabeth II on the other.

According to the Bode Museum, the purity of the gold of the coin was in the Guinness Book of Records, with an exceptional level of 999.9/1000.

While the coin itself has a face value of one million US dollars, the gold it is made of was estimated to be worth around 4.5 million dollars.

Police are working on the assumption that more than one person pulled off the museum heist, given that the coin weighs about 100 kilograms and has a a diameter of 53 centimeters.

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, the "Big Maple Leaf". / CFP Photo

Police said the thieves entered the museum undetected through a window, possibly with the help of a ladder.

"Based on the information we have so far we believe that the thief, maybe thieves, broke open a window in the back of the museum next to the railway tracks," police spokesman Winfrid Wenzel said. "They then managed to enter the building and went to the coin exhibition."

"The coin was secured with bullet-proof glass inside the building. That much I can say," Wenzel added. "Neither I nor the Bode Museum can go into detail regarding personnel inside the building, the alarm system or security installations."

The Bode Museum in central Berlin has one of the largest collections of coins in the world, in its famous Muenzkabinett or coin cabinet which houses some 500,000 rare coins.

(Source: Xinhua, Reuters)

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