About Safes

[mick silver]

http://www.321gold.com/info/030609_safes.html
The writer's name has been withheld
Mar 6, 2009
The need to keep valuables safe from fire and theft is as old as wealth. 321gold readers should keep some gold bullion. The recent article (http://www.321gold.com/editorials/casey/casey030509.html) by Doug Casey discussed 4 options: safe deposit box, burial, hiding, and safes. This essay considers safes.
I was introduced to safes by Mr. Mancini of Mancini Safe Company in 1984, after I purchased my first gold coins. He showed me a John Tann safe that had withstood a 3-day attack with a jackhammer. The frustrated thieves spray-painted "Damn John Tann" on the door.
It took me 20 years to accumulate enough gold to justify the purchase of a used 4,500 lb jeweler's safe for $4,500. Installation added another $800. The safe has 5" of drill-resistant ferroconcrete, armor plate, heavy copper frame and randomly-placed copper alloy bolts to defeat torch attacks, plus 2 separate locks protected by relockers, tempered glass plates that shatter and lock the bolts permanently if attacked by punches or hammers. Opening the safe afterwards will cost nearly as much as the purchase, but will seem cheap if it comes to that.
A safe buys time, nothing more. Any safe will fail if the attacker has sufficient time and resources. How much time? A "home security safe" opened very easily using an axe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr_54FXnJCQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr_54FXnJCQ) [video]
The leading manufacturer of home safes emphasizes fire security, not burglary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbz0hlWwumg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbz0hlWwumg) [video]
A "premium" safe costing $1,000 fails in less than 2 minutes when attacked with a crowbar and pry bar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBhOjWHbD6M&NR=1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBhOjWHbD6M&NR=1). [video]
More fearsome are oxy-acetylene torches, plasma cutters, and thermic lances, which use high-pressure oxygen to burn steel rods and cut most metal like butter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbo3NS-rZqw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbo3NS-rZqw) [video]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMKBOoAOR7I (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMKBOoAOR7I) [video]
A cheap safe is equivalent to putting a "steal me" sign on your gold. You can hide the safe, but why not just hide the gold? It will be smaller and easier to conceal.
Is there any hope?
Safes are like any other kind of security, a continual race between defenders and attackers. UL Labs has been testing safes against sophisticated attacks for 85 years. (European readers can find equivalents to UL ratings with a Google search.) While the highest rating is 60 minutes, UL rules are conservative. The clock runs only while attackers are working, they can take breaks, plan, and set up at their leisure. They can use jackhammers, high-pressure carbide drills, even explosives. The UL attackers review plans of the safe construction, an advantage few free-lance thieves enjoy. UL-rated "30 minute" safes, like the John Tann safe I saw 24 years ago, often withstand attacks lasting nights and weekends. UL standard 687 recognizes 10 classifications of burglary resistant safes:
http://www.inkassafes.com/about.html?sid=8 (http://www.inkassafes.com/about.html?sid=8)
UL tests for attacks with tools (TL rating), torches (TR), and explosives (TX). The attacks can be on the door or on any face, in which case an "x6" is added to the rating. Safe cracking via lock manipulation makes great movies, but it takes days of careful work by top professionals to crack a good safe this way. I've opened a cheap safe with manipulation in less then 2 hours, and I am no safe cracker.
Jewelers store valuable merchandise overnight, and their insurers require UL-rated safes. 321gold readers can benefit from experience distilled in jeweler's guidelines:
http://www.321gold.com/info/030609_safes.gif
$150,000 is a large number, how high do you expect gold to go? If $3,000 gold is possible, 50 ounces requires a TL-15 safe. To protect 100 ounces, if you think gold will hit $5,000, buy a TRTL-rated safe.
Good safes aren't cheap. Megasafe.com has a good selection of new and used safes. Find a dealer near you and visit them. Add shipping and installation by a professional. Safes are heavy enough to be dangerous; this is not a DIY project.
A final word of caution: if you buy a safe, keep it secret, and be safe. Hide your safe. The door on my safe weighs 800 lbs. I make a point of using only the handles, and never put my fingers on the door edge. Close it gently lest you accidentally trigger the relockers. Children find small enclosed spaces irresistible, but getting locked inside a safe can be a death sentence...
Be careful, be safe.

[mick silver]

dam there used safe are high http://www.megasafe.com/home.php

[LETMYSILVERGO]

A Guy Told Me I Could Have A Safe, It Was On His Front Pouch..he Said It Was At The 1933 World Fair And If U Could Crack It They Would Give U $10.000--

Any Way He Had The Key , But The Works In The Door Where All Rusted & It Looked Like It Weighed 800 Lbs-- So I Passed, Then Passed The Info On To My Metal Junk Buddy

[mick silver]

A Guy Told Me I Could Have A Safe, It Was On His Front Pouch..he Said It Was At The 1933 World Fair And If U Could Crack It They Would Give U $10.000--

Any Way He Had The Key , But The Works In The Door Where All Rusted & It Looked Like It Weighed 800 Lbs-- So I Passed, Then Passed The Info On To My Metal Junk Buddy
take it , the cost of the steel well make you money , you can clean it up an paint it,,,,,,,,,, new safe for free

[Malus]

Put a "Danger/High Explosives inside" on the outside of the safe. Pretty much deters any tampering.

[main1event]

A friend of mine bought his safe here http://www.patriotsafe.com/main.php

I've been considering a purchase, mostly for the fire protection.

[Ardent Listener]

Sentry fire safes are sold at almost every box store (home depot, office max, etc). They are usually only $25-30.

[cybermorpheus]

Sentry fire safes are sold at almost every box store (home depot, office max, etc). They are usually only $25-30.

I think they are the best... no water, not fire, easy to carry on if SHTF... I like it and I hold it.

[apDdraig]

http://www.sportsmansteelsafes.com/images_defender/053-m.jpg
I'm considering pouring concrete walls in my basement, and installing a vault door. Compared to the common "consumer" safes, they're thicker overall, use thicker steel, are cheaper, are easier to ship, and come with many available options.

I like the inward-opening version, so that a large vault room can be used as a tornado shelter (a concern here in the midwest.)

Sportsman Steel Safe Company (http://www.sportsmansteelsafes.com/defender.htm)

Anyone have any pro/con comments ?

[TheLoneRanger]

I like these http://www.dakotasafe.com/products.html they are as good as any regular safe, but don't look like a safe when delivered, you can move them arround yourself unassembled and assemble them inside rooms or closets that , when assembled, they won't fit thru the doors.. forcing anybody that tries to have to rip them off their mounting bolts and tear down walls before they can remove them from the premises.. I also like the expansion kits and the weight and the fact you can put them in closets and basements with no ramps or upstairs where you can't possibly turn the corner with the safe assembled.

Of course adding a few of these in the closet with the safe s helpful as well http://www.defensedevices.com/terminator.html

[Lone Soldier]

I have several of thses safes and Terry(the Owner) will make a custom safe to what your heart desires. Its Called strudy Safes. Here is the Link:

http://www.sturdysafe.com/


Please be sure to read all the information posted and then compare them to a Liberty or Patriot or other commercial safes. For the money that you pay and for what you get, in my opinion there is none better and Safer.

[YORKIE]

Wow.. does the gal come to install it???:D

[LETMYSILVERGO]

It's Me, I Would Have Taken The Safe, But He Did Not Want Anyone Driving In His Yard----so I Would Have Had To Levitate It 20 Yards-- He Was About 90--??????--

[chux03]

To my way of thinking and in my experience, you either have to have a solid, uncrackable, large, heavy safe OR you can have a slightly less secure, less costly safe AND have a good hiding spot as well. And that's the strategy I've chosen. I have one of the costlier Sentry gun safes and to say it's secured to the floor and walls is an understatement. It would take some work to DIS-connect it from it's secured points BUT even if you got it there where you could really wind up on it like in those videos (though the burglars I'm familiar with are too weak and lazy to pack along a bar like that in that one video, not to mention that if you happened to be home and seen that feller trying to get in your house with it, I'd say it would be JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE by shooting that prick RIGHT THROUGH THE DOOR....CASE CLOSED!!) and you could get it open, you'd most likely be disappointed in what was waiting for you inside. And that would be an old H&R single shot shotgun, some bullets and a couple of ounces of silver AND NOT MUCH ELSE. All the goodies would be a few feet away SECRETLY STASHED behind a false, SECURED wall in the closet and above the stairs where there's a nice gun rack mounted on the wall which sports my AR, my Remington tactical shotgun, numerous pistols, hundreds of rounds for each and every one, along with the physical silver stash as well. When I go inside there after opening it up, I feel like one of those movies where the secret agent opens up HIS secret place, showing an arsenal that would choke a goat AND SAVE THE WORLD (though I admit I'm fresh out of hand grenades and machine guns. :D )
Anyway, I used the multiple strategy of both strength and stealthiness when hiding the goods around here as it both works and holds down the overall costs while doing just as good of job of SECURING THE GOODS. So far anyway....

[Gino]

I reckon a concrete saw with a diamond blade would cut the top off any safe in pretty quick time.

http://sydneytools.com.au/images/products/Stihl%20TS%20800%20pro.jpg

They cut through concrete and steel without much trouble at all.

I like the strongroom door, except that you can cut the door frame out.

[Lone Soldier]

I reckon a concrete saw with a diamond blade would cut the top off any safe in pretty quick time.

http://sydneytools.com.au/images/products/Stihl%20TS%20800%20pro.jpg

They cut through concrete and steel without much trouble at all.

I like the strongroom door, except that you can cut the door frame out.



I was told that most any safe given time and the right tools can be defeated.Most safes are there for the purpose to provide some security but mostly make it harder to stop theft . But for a thief to have all all the proper tools and needed time is another thing.Most Theft occurs from simple break ins and Robberys when nobody is home.I think it was said that most home burglery times are less than 10 minutes in someone house? The majority of thiefs will bypass the safe and go for what can be simply carried away.

Dont think that by haveing a safe that your valuables are 100% .As many have mentioned.Place the safe in a location that isint directly visable or hidden if possable. Have it anchored to the concrete so it can not be tipped over or moved. If you have the money, have a professional burgler alarm installed on your home so you have mutiple fronts of defence.I find it hard to believe but many people of Who have thousands of dollars worth of Pm,Jewelry,Other other valuable items Wont spend a few additional Grand to protect there investments/Items.Also lets not forget what an accidental fire can do? If your going to invest in safe for your home-by all means make it a fireproof one, one that has a real 1 hour time rateing and more for those who live out in the country. Fire can wreck your Life and also your investments!

[clr8ter]

Wow.. does the gal come to install it???

Judging from the shape of her pants, yes, she does.......LOL

[Longhaul]

I reckon a concrete saw with a diamond blade would cut the top off any safe in pretty quick time.

http://sydneytools.com.au/images/products/Stihl%20TS%20800%20pro.jpg

They cut through concrete and steel without much trouble at all.

I like the strongroom door, except that you can cut the door frame out.

I'm guessing under the Paper/Scissors/Rock theory.....gun shoots man with saw and safe owner gains a $400 tool in which he sells on craigslist and then takes the loot to buy a roll or so of silver.:cool:

[chux03]

This is a GREAT safe related story with some historical significance....


Larry LaBorde


If you have been reading my previous articles you know that my father was the part owner of a local bank many years ago. Whenever I would accompany him to the bank as a young boy, I was always fascinated by that big vault door. I would just stand next to the open door and study the lock workings through the glass panel on the back of the door. Years later I purchased the old cash safe out of that same vault and now have it on display in my office as an antique.

One decision a gold and silver investor has to make is where to keep the darn stuff. There are several options for investing in gold and silver. You can put it in a bank safe deposit box, you can leave it on deposit with your broker, you can bring it home and lock it up in your own safe, you can hide it, you can invest in a fund that sells shares of gold stored in a bonded vault, you can buy mining shares, you can buy futures, etc. The list is almost endless. I believe that maybe the best thing is to do them all. If you are investing for security however, there is nothing like a little gold and silver at home in a safe where you can always get to it regardless of what happens. I am not talking about large portions of metals stored at home but just think of what you have stored in your garage in rolling stock. Most people do not think twice about leaving their $40,000 car outside in the driveway. You simply take reasonable precautions with a reasonable amount. Beyond that you move onto other investing venues.

In the past they made safes massive because they locked up "real money." Take an afternoon and visit your local used safe dealer in your town. Stay away from the new safes at retail outlets. You can buy a "bank" quality used safe very reasonably now. Look at safes that have been removed from the local bank that closed a few years ago. There are plenty of them and they are cheap. For under $1,000 you can get quite a deal if you do not mind a scratch or two. Remember that you are interested in security and not a nice exterior finish. If you decide to invest in a safe at home be careful how you set your combination. Don't be ridiculous you say - who would be so foolish as to not set a proper combination you say - read on.

I recently read a couple of books about Richard Feynman the Nobel Prize winning physicist who helped to develop the atomic bomb during World War II at Los Alamos. It seems that Mr. Feynman was quite a hands on kind of guy who liked to tinker with different things for amusement. (He said there wasn't much else for amusement those days in Los Alamos after work.) When they started work they all had locking file cabinets in their offices for their secret papers. The first cabinets had small 3 tumbler locks that he learned to pick rather easily. After a short while new safe cabinets were ordered that had 3 disk Mosler combination locks on them. Feynman who loved puzzles took his lock apart one night in his office and saw how it worked.

He figured out that there were 1,000,000 different possible combinations with 3 disks @ 100 numbers each (100 to the 3rd power). He tinkered for a while and found out that 2 numbers either way would still work. This reduced the number of combinations to 8,000 possibilities (20 to the 3rd power). Through experimentation he found out that if a file cabinet was unlocked, you could turn the dial carefully while applying pressure to the throw and pick up the last two numbers of the combination. This only left the first number of the combination or twenty different possibilities to open the cabinet! Feynman carefully recorded the last two numbers of everyone's "secure" file cabinet while he was in their office during his work. People just thought that casually spinning the dial on their open safe was a nervous habit of his. Pretty soon word got out that he could "crack open" the secure file cabinets. Whenever a document was needed and someone was on leave they would ask him to open the safe. He would gather a few tools, check his list of numbers and then lock himself in the office, open the safe in a couple of minutes and read a book for another 1/2 hour before opening the office and declaring the safe opened.

Feynman tried to learn how to really open safes and read several books on the subject. They all usually digressed to hints on human nature such as birthdays, dates, written numbers on the bottom or top of the secretary's phone list or the top edge of her desk drawer, etc. In one instance he was trying to gain entry into the secret documents library on a Saturday only to find out it was closed. One of his friends was in charge of de classifying documents and had copies of all the documents in nine secure file cabinets in his office. Feynman did not have a clue what the last two numbers for any of those safes were so he fell back to the old human nature tricks. The secretary had a list of Greek characters carefully printed out under the glass on her desk. Next to pi was the number 3.14159. Why did the secretary need to have pi out to the 5th decimal place on her list? Sure enough that was not only the combination to the first cabinet, but all nine were the same. His friend almost lost it when he found Feynman's cryptic notes in his cabinets saying, "he should be more careful with his country's most valuable secrets."

My favorite safecracking adventure of the world famous physicist was an occasion when after the war they were selling some surplus equipment at Los Alamos. One Captain had ordered an expensive safe for his office because he was anticipating much larger secrets than the others. The Captain had moved on but his safe had to be opened before it could be sold to make sure there was nothing left inside. Feynman had heard that the new locksmith had been called up to drill the safe. He naturally didn't want to miss this so he went to the Captain's old office only to find out that the new locksmith had already cracked open the safe. Feynman was obsessed with meeting this new genius in the maintenance department and sets about trying to meet him.

After weeks of casually walking by his shop and waving and then talking and finally having lunch together in the shop, Feynman finally revealed his secret of picking off the last two combination numbers from an open safe. The locksmith had never heard of it and was very impressed. Finally Feynman asked him how he opened the Captain's safe and the old locksmith confessed. He told him that his supervisor had ordered him to drill the safe. He didn't have a clue how to drill a safe but it was a good job so he loaded a drill and some bits in a bag and headed off in that direction. He figured he would put on a good show and drill into the door and then come up with some kind of excuse why it wouldn't open later.

The old locksmith had worked in a safe manufacturing facility years before and remembered that they set all the new safes with one of two combinations at the factory. They were supposed to be reset by the final owner upon installation of the safe. In desperation he tried both of the factory settings and the safe opened! He simply reported that the job was done and went back to his shop relieved that he wouldn't be fired. Then the old locksmith lowered his voice and told his new friend, "If you want to meet a real safecracker, find Richard Feynman." Feynman then introduced himself to the old locksmith and they both had a good laugh. Over the remaining weeks of that last summer Feynman tried as many safes as he could with the two factory settings and found that 20% of the safes that held the most secure secrets of the atomic bomb still had the original "factory" combinations!

Buy a safe, be smart, and set your combination as random numbers.

From the book, "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" as told to Ralph Leighton.

###

Larry LaBorde
Silver Trading Company
318-470-7291
website: www.silvertrading.net
email: llabord@aol.com

Larry lives in the occupied South [Shreveport, LA] with his wife Puddy and sells precious metals at the Silver Trading Company.

[sunsetcliff]

Sentry fire safes are sold at almost every box store (home depot, office max, etc). They are usually only $25-30.

how would I get a key? I own one, it came with 2 keys, the one snapped in 1/2. I am down to one key.


??

[Ancona]

Great Post Chux!