Biggest gold coin

With gold coins no longer being used in circulating currency, instead serving as collectable items or investment assets, the competitive nature of humans has unsurprisingly spilled into the domain of mints and refiners. The pursuit of making the biggest gold coins is an expensive one, but a few mints have attempted it, and the results are undeniably impressive to behold.

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The one tonne gold coin

The biggest gold coin, as listed by the Guinness World Records, is a one tonne Australian Kangaroo. The colossal 99.99% pure gold coin has a diameter of 80 centimetres, and is a massive 12 centimetres thick. Produced in 2011 by the Perth Mint, it has a face value of $1 million (Australian Dollars) making it the world's largest legal tender coin. As the world's biggest gold coin however it is of course worth far more and was valued at over $53 million.

At the time of writing, this coin would be worth just over £32 million on pure metal content alone, but such a unique, record-breaking coin commands a far higher price.

The one tonne 'Red Kangaroo' gold coin. Image courtesy of the Perth Mint.

The Perth Mint introduced the gold and silver Kangaroo – or Nugget – bullion coins in 1986. The one ounce coin is classed as legal tender, and has a face value of 100 Australian Dollars. 1/20 oz, 1/10 oz, 1/4 oz, 1/2 oz, 1 oz, 2 oz, 10 oz, and 1 kg denomination are also readily available.

The name ‘Nugget’ is due to the fact that originally the reverse depicted a gold nugget. The Nugget design was replaced by the Kangaroo in 1989, but the original name stuck in most trading circles. As part of the British Commonwealth, all Perth Mint coins produced for Australia feature Queen Elizabeth on the obverse.

BullionByPost stock a wide range of Nuggets or Kangaroos but unfortunately, we do not stock the one tonne version!

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Big Maple Leaf

Before the one tonne nugget, the world record for the largest gold coin was held by six Canadian Maple Leaf coins; each weighing 100 kilograms – with a diameter of 50 centimetres, and a thickness of 3 centimetres.

The Maple Leaf gold bullion coins were introduced in 1979, and have since been minted annually by the Royal Canadian Mint. The one ounce coin is classed as legal tender, and has a face value of 50 Canadian Dollars. 1/25 oz, 1/20 oz, 1/10 oz, 1/4 oz and 1/2 oz denominations are also available. BullionByPost stock a large range of Maple denominations.

The six 100 kilograms coins, each with a face value of $1 million Canadian Dollars, were minted in 2007. The pure gold value is around £3 million at the time of writing.

In 2017, one of the 100 kilogram Canadian Maples was famously stolen in an audacious robbery from Berlin’s Bode Museum. Four robbers, one of whom was a museum guard, were caught and prosecuted. The coin, however, was not recovered and is believed to have been melted down.

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Large gold coins

Traditionally, bullion coins weigh one troy ounce. For consumers though, there are bigger coins that can be purchased. Many popular bullion coins have two ounce variations, such as the Perth Mint’s lunar new year series.

The Mexican 50 Pesos is one of the largest bullion coins minted for currency in large quantities. It has a gold content of 37.5g, a diameter of 36mm, and was minted between 1921 and 1972.

In the UK, our largest gold coin typically produced is The Royal Mint’s £5 British Gold Coin, also known as the Quintuple Sovereign. It has a diameter of 36 millimetres, is 3 millimetres thick, and contains 36.613 grams of pure gold. They do however produce larger coins on occasion for collectable purposes.

In 2021 The Royal Mint produced their biggest gold coin, an impressive 10 kilo 'Masterwork' coin celebrating the completion of the popular Queen's Beast series. As The Royal Mint's largest coin, this coin would be the UK's biggest gold coin at least in modern times for legal tender.