One-Million-Dollar coin stolen from Berlin museum

An enormous Canadian coin called “The Big Maple Leaf” has been from Berlin’s Bode Museum on Monday March 27.  

The precious and extremely heavy coin made of pure gold, has a face value of $1 million, but is worth more than $4 million at today’s gold prices.

The piece weighs 100 kilograms (220 pounds). Issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007, like all Canadian coins, it features the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.

The coin which is three centimeters think, has a diameter of 53 centimeters (21 inches). The piece has also entered the Guinness Book of Records for its unsurpassed purity of 999.99/1000 gold.

Police believe the thief, or thieves, used a step ladder propped up on some adjacent tram tracks to break in through a window at the back of the museum.

The coin had been on show at the Bode Museum since 2010, and is part of the Münzkabinett collection, Berlin's most important archive of coinage, which includes more than 540,000 objects altogether.