BERLIN -- One of Germany's most storied sports trophies was believed to have been stolen and melted down. Now it has turned up in the champion team's own basement.
A four-month saga took an unusual turn Monday when Germany's champion men's handball team Fuechse Berlin reported that the large silver dish that went missing from its offices in November had been found stashed in a basement storage area.
The club believes that suspects stole the trophy from its offices and then hid it to retrieve later but decided against doing so because of media attention around the theft.
"The risk of being caught seemed too high even for the master thieves," the club said in a statement Monday.
The trophy, which was valued at around 12,000 euros ($13,900) as of 2014, is engraved with the names of champion teams going back decades and had seemed lost.
After authorities found a silver bar during a series of raids on addresses in January, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office told the Sport Bild newspaper that the suspicion was that the trophy had been melted down. The league has now canceled the order it made for a replacement, German news agency dpa reported.
Handball is a fast-paced team game that is one of the most popular sports in Germany and northern Europe, and the men's league is widely shown on TV.
Fuechse Berlin won't get to hold the trophy again for a while longer, though. The club said it has been taken by the police as evidence.
