Strike Force Bandit, a special police unit set up to investigate the theft from a warehouse in western Sydney, has charged Steven John Neilson, 47, with three counts of breaking and entering.

Gold-coloured and worth one Australian dollar each, the coins are produced by the Royal Australian Mint and are legal tender in the country.

They resemble normal Australian dollar coins except for an image of the popular show's main character on one side.

Known as Bluey dollarbucks, they have been fetching as much as 10 times their face value online and one eBay seller has offered a pack of three for almost 600 Australian dollars (£309).

Neilson worked at a warehouse in the Sydney suburb of Wetherill Park where the coins were being stored for two days before being taken to Brisbane, police said.

With the help of two other men, he is accused of snatching the haul, which weighed 500kg, from the back of a truck in June, before selling it online within hours.

Police recovered 189 of the coins in a raid on a house in the city the same month but have said only 1,000 of the coins have been accounted for and most will now be in circulation.

Neilson was arrested at a Sydney home on Wednesday.

The New South Wales Robbery and Serious Crime Squad named its investigation unit after Bandit, who is Bluey's father in the show.

Detective Superintendent Joseph Doueihi told reporters the theft "has deprived a lot of young children and members of the community of having access to these coins, so we're doing our absolute best to try to recover these coins and put them back into circulation".

The vast bulk of coins are already in circulation, Mr Doueihi added.

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The Australian animated show is targeted at children but is widely popular with adults and was one of last year's most streamed television programmes in the US.

It is the 14th highest-rated show of all time, according to IMDB.

Anyone who has received one of the stolen coins does not need to return it, police said.