Solid £3.5m gold coin with Queen's head stolen from gallery

A giant solid gold coin featuring the Queen's head and worth millions of pounds has been stolen from a gallery in Berlin.

The Canadian coin, nicknamed the Big Maple Leaf, has a face value of $1m Canadian (£594,000), but because of the purity of its gold is worth far more – an estimated £3.58m.

It vanished at around 3.30am local time on Monday morning from the Bode Museum in Berlin where it has been displayed since 2010 on loan from the Royal Canadian Mint.

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The German museum has one of the world's largest coin collections, with around 540,000 items, says The Guardian.

Detectives said that it would probably have required more than one thief to remove the 221lb coin from the gallery where it was on display.

The coin, which features a portrait of the Queen, has a diameter of 1ft 8in and is 1.2 inches thick.

Police spokesman Winfrid Wenzel said: "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.

"They then managed to enter the building and went to the coin exhibition."

Neither the police nor the museum were willing to discuss in any detail the security arrangements that were thwarted during the theft, though police did suggest a ladder had been used.

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

The financial newspaper Barron's says the theft shows that "while investors may debate the merits of gold, there are some people out there who clearly are big fans of the precious metal".

The paper speculates that the "thieves may have some arbitrage in mind", suggesting they may sell it for its value as metal, presumably after melting it down, to make an instant profit.

It adds: "Australia's Perth Mint may want to tighten its security – it has a one tonne gold coin!"