Police have charged an Australian warehouse worker who is believed to have stolen more than A$600,000 (£309,000) worth of limited-edition coins based on the hit children’s television show Bluey.
Demand for the collectable currency was huge when it went on sale in June this year, with producers Royal Australian Mint diverting all its phone lines to the sales centre on launch day, citing "Blueymania".
Police allege the coins were sold online, hours after they were stolen from the back of a truck at the warehouse where the accused worked.
They were due to be transported to the mint at the time of the alleged theft, police said.
According to the authorities, they have recovered around 1,000 coins and believe that the rest are in general circulation.
On Wednesday, 47-year-old Steven John Neilson was arrested after a raid on a home and charged with three counts of breaking and entering.
Mr Neilson was denied bail when he appeared in Parramatta Court.
He is accused of stealing 64,000 unreleased, limited-edition A$1 coins from a warehouse in the Sydney suburb of Wetherill Park in June, according to "Strike Force Bandit", a special unit police set up to investigate the theft and named after Bandit who is Bluey's father in the show.
The collection of three $1 coloured coins was branded as Dollarbucks – the way that money is often referred to in the cartoon.
The coins look like A$1 coins and would be legal tender. Police say they are selling online for ten times their face value.
A similar run of special commemorative coins sell for A$20 each on the mint's website. One eBay seller was charging almost A$600 for a pack of three.
Detective Superintendent Joseph Doueihi told reporters at a news conference he was not initially aware of the show's popularity.
"The theft of these coins have deprived a lot of young children and members of the community from having access to these coins, so we're doing our absolute best to try to recover these coins and put them back into circulation."
Police say the man worked at the warehouse and stole the coins, which weighed 500 kilograms (1102 lb), from the back of a truck, before selling them online within hours. Police are looking for two male accomplices.
A raid on a Sydney house in June recovered 189 coins and Doueihi said the vast bulk of coins are already in circulation. Those who receive one do not need to surrender it to police, he added.
He appealed for anyone with information about large stashes of coins to contact the police.
Bluey is made by Brisbane-based animation firm Ludo with BBC Studios and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
It follows the daily lives of the Heeler family of dogs and since first broadcasting in Australia in 2018 it has become a global phenomenon, broadcast in more than 60 countries including the UK, the US and China.
It was streamed for more than 20 billion minutes on Disney+ in the US last year, putting it in the country's top 10 streaming programmes for minutes viewed.
There are more than 150 episodes of Bluey across three seasons.
