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100-kg gold coin worth $1 million stolen from Berlin’s Bode Museum
world Updated: Mar 27, 2017 19:37 IST
AFP, Berlin
Big Maple Leaf
One of the world's largest gold coins, a 2007 Canadian $1 million Big Maple Leaf, which was stolen from Berlin's Bode Museum.(REUTERS File)
Thieves stole a gold coin with a face value of $1 million and weighing 100 kg from Berlin’s Bode Museum on Monday.
According to German media, the stolen coin was the “Big Maple Leaf”, a commemorative piece issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007.
The coin, 53 cm (21 inches) across and 3 cm thick, features the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.
Bode Museum gave the face value of the coin at $1 million (920,000 euros), though the market price of 100 kg of gold is around $4 million.
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 3.30am.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/world/europe/gold-coin-berlin-stolen.html?_r=0
Thieves Take a Chunk of Change, All 221 Pounds of It, From a Berlin Museum
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By MELISSA EDDYMARCH 27, 2017
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The Big Maple Leaf, a Canadian coin that is about 21 inches in diameter and more than an inch thick, at the Bode Museum in Berlin. It is worth as much as $4.5 million at current market prices. Credit Marcel Mettelsiefen/European Pressphoto Agency
BERLIN — You could never palm it, flip it or plunk it into a vending machine. But apparently it can be pinched: One of the world’s largest gold coins, a 221-pound Canadian monster called the Big Maple Leaf, was stolen overnight from the Bode Museum in Berlin, the police said on Monday.
The coin is about 21 inches in diameter and over an inch thick. It has the head of Queen Elizabeth II on one side and a maple leaf on the other. Its face value is 1 million Canadian dollars, or about $750,000, but by gold content alone, it is worth as much as $4.5 million at current market prices.
And though it weighs about as much as a refrigerator, somehow thieves apparently managed to lug it through the museum and up at least one floor to get it out of a window at the back of the building. The police are still trying to figure out exactly how they did it.
The Bode Museum, which sits on Museum Island in the Spree River, is part of the complex belonging to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, or in German, the Preussischer Kulturbesitz. The local east-west commuter railway runs across the island along the back of the museum.
The burglars seemed to have broken in through a window above the railway tracks during the two-and-a-half hours when the trains pause for the night.
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The police were alerted to the break-in at 4 a.m. and think that it took place between 3:20 a.m. and 3:45 a.m. The window, some three to four yards above the tracks, stood ajar and appeared to have been “forcibly opened,” said Winfrid Wenzel, a police spokesman.
Officers searching the crime scene found a ladder on the elevated railway’s roadbed, which is near the museum’s back wall. The police declined to give further details, including whether security cameras monitored that window, or whether the museum’s alarm systems had gone off.
The Big Maple Leaf had been on display since December 2010, on a floor below the window in its own bulletproof case. It was surrounded by other, smaller gold coins. The bulletproof glass “appeared to have been violently shattered,” Mr. Wenzel said. But the thieves seemed to know what they wanted; the smaller gold coins were untouched.
Given the coin’s weight, the authorities said they suspected that more than one person was involved. Their theory for now is that the thieves dragged the coin through the museum, out the window and then along the railway track, possibly reaching a park on the opposite bank of the river near the Hackescher Markt, a public square in Berlin that is home to a number of late-night bars and cafes. The police appealed for clues from anyone who had been in the area at that time.
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Experts said it would be difficult to sell the stolen coin, but worried that it could be melted down and the gold resold on the open market.
The museum is regularly closed on Mondays and is expected to reopen as planned on Tuesday.
In addition to paintings, sculptures and other works of art, the museum displays what it says is one of the largest collection of coins and medals in the world, with about 500,000 objects.
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The Royal Canadian Mint created its first million-dollar coin, in Canadian dollars, as a demonstration in 2007 — “because we can,” the mint says on its website — to draw attention to its series of more modestly sized, if still costly, pure gold coins. But Alex Reeves, a spokesman for the mint, said it decided to produce up to 10 copies of the Big Maple Leaf after being approached by potential buyers.
Interest, however, has been limited. Only five have been produced for sale to date; the last delivery was made in 2008. “We were satisfied with selling five coins we didn’t expect to sell at all,” Mr. Reeves said.
A granite display stand is supplied with the coin when purchased. Mr. Reeves said that the mint, which still has the first coin “safe and sound in our high security vault,” moves it around in a trunk with casters similar to those used by traveling music acts and stage shows.
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Not included, however, is any sort of theft protection plan.
“Customers are responsible for security of their own assets,” Mr. Reeves said.
Correction: March 28, 2017
An earlier version of this article included an outdated reference to the Big Maple Leaf. It was the world’s largest gold coin when it was issued, but it is not the largest now (a unique coin cast since then by the Perth Mint in Australia is larger).
Ian Austen contributed from Ottawa, Canada.
A version of this article appears in print on March 28, 2017, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Chunk of Change (221 Pounds of It) Is Stolen in Berlin. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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