In contrast to the falling-down-pants guys with their pockets stuffed with $100,000 in stolen dimes, here's some big money.
From Hazlitt Magazine, March 1, 2023:
It was a piece of currency so large it seemed unimaginable anyone would try to steal it. But that was part of the appeal.
....MUCH MOREThe figure turns to address two others. Like him, they are dressed in head-to-toe black, their faces obscured. Unlike him, they are lagging on the stairs of Berlin’s Hackescher Markt S-Bahn platform. Because there is no audio and his face is turned away from the CCTV cameras, there’s no way to know what he’s saying, but there’s something in his body language. A restlessness, like an eager kid telling his friends to catch up because they’re at risk of missing out.
It’s 3 a.m., on March 27, 2017. The figures are going to steal a 100 kg coin the size of a car tire made of the purest gold in the world.
Whatever the leader says works. The two other figures catch up, fall in line, and when they reach the top of the stairs, speed walk towards the end of the S-Bahn platform. The three figures step off the platform, onto the track bed, and over to the service pathway running parallel to the tracks. They didn’t have to worry about any trains passing by and spotting them, because they knew that the S-Bahn wouldn’t start up again until 4:13 a.m.
The path they walk gives them an enviable view of the unattended city, theirs in the way all cities belong to those awake at such an early hour. The Berlin Cathedral looms above them and Monbijoupark, with its winter-battered trees, peers over the S-Bahn tracks. Beneath them is the Spree River, and ahead is the Bode Museum, part of what is known as Museum Island.
It was there, on the second floor of the Bode Museum, that the Big Maple Leaf coin awaited them.
Since its creation, the coin had possessed a curious quality, a weight greater than its mass, and a worth beyond its face value. It had a way of changing lives. The three figures were moments away from learning that themselves. If they succeeded, the coin would certainly make them rich. But it also had the potential to do more: make them infamous, noteworthy, respected, admired for the brazenness of their act. Which was the idea. This was meant to be a provocation, and what was at stake in those early hours of the day wasn’t just repercussions, but reputation....
German police linked the billion euro/dollar/pound* theft at Dresden's Green Vault to the theft of the giant coin in Berlin:
And In Other Gigantic Theft News....
*Seriously, how do you put a price on stuff like a diamond encrusted sword hilt :
