Gold has long been the main element of money. However, gold coins are rarely used as circulating currency these days, so mints produce these impressive promotional coins, many of which are legal tender.

The world’s largest gold coin is a one-ton Australian kangaroo minted by Western Australia’s Perth Mint in 2011. As the name suggests, this coin weighs 1 ton (2,200 pounds) (about the same as 11 real kangaroos) and is 99.99 percent pure gold.

The coin was struck to showcase the gold kangaroo series launched by the mint in 1989 and has a face value of AUD1 million (US$648,000), making it the largest legal tender in the world.

However, if you plan to carry this trinket with you, you may need to get a larger wallet, as this 12 centimeters (4.7 in) thick coin is about half the height of Danny DeVito – that’s 80 centimeters (31.4 in) in its original form. It means. money.

The impressive size, purity and record-breaking title mean that although the technical value of the coin is A$1 million ($648,000), the current market value of the metal at gold prices alone at the time of publication is around A$110,055,898 ($71,429,850). It makes the actual value of the coin much higher than its face value.

The coin, which entered the Guinness Book of Records a year after its release, went on a tour of Asia and Europe in 2014 to promote the Perth Mint and even made a day trip to New York in 2019. Physical Gold (AAAU) gold exchange-traded fund. The Mint also issues smaller denomination kangaroo coins: the 28 gram (1 oz) one has a face value of 100 Australian dollars (US$65).

The previous world record holder, a 99.7-kilogram (220 lb) Canadian coin known as the “Big Maple Leaf”, was the first of five identical solid coins introduced in 2007. But in 2017, one of the coins was stolen from a museum in Berlin in a 16-minute heist. The face value of the coin was 1 million Canadian dollars (US$741,000), but as with the kangaroo, its actual value is believed to be much higher.

“We thought it would be better to make it big enough that it would remain the largest coin in the world for a long time,” Perth Mint chief Ed Harboose said at the time. “Casting and handcrafting a coin of this size and weight was an incredible challenge that few other mints could even consider.”

Australia, home to the largest gold nugget in history, caused one of the world’s largest gold rushes in the 19th century and is still actively mined for its gold reserves. You don’t even have to be tech-savvy to find gold in Austria, as an amateur gold prospector who recently found a gold nugget worth AU$240,000 ($160,000) will tell you.

The total amount of gold discovered on Earth so far could fit inside a 23-meter (75-foot) cube, so let’s hope someone produces a ridiculously large coin soon.