Pure gold coin weighing 100kg stolen from museum

A valuable gold coin has been stolen from a Berlin museum.

It wasn’t like the thief was able to just put it in his pocket either.

The coin, worth $US4 million, is made of pure gold and weighs about 100 kilograms.

It is a Canadian gold coin named the Big Maple Leaf and bears an image of Queen Elizabeth II.

Markus Farr, a spokesperson for Bode Museum confirmed the coin was taken during an overnight heist.

“The coin was stolen last night, it’s gone,” Markus Farr said.

The coin (pictured below) was issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007 and was featured in the Guinness Book of Records for its “unmatched” degree of purity.

It measures 53 centimetres wide and is about 3 cm thick.

It has been on loan to the museum since December 2010.

Police think it was stolen by a group of thieves who entered the museum undetected through a window, possibly with the help of a ladder after one was found at nearby railway tracks.

“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 is believed to be the only item taken.

There is no information on how the thieves were able to access the coin once they were inside.

“The coin was secured with bullet-proof glass inside the building. That much I can say,” Mr Wenzel said.

“Neither I nor the Bode Museum can go into detail regarding personnel inside the building, the alarm system or security installations.”

The Bode Museum has one of the world’s largest coin collections with more than 540,000 items.

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