The argument against a safety deposit box.

Hi all,
So I’ll start with this: the multiple location strategy and the safety deposit box strategy are both excellent strategies for several reasons. We can go over them in depth another time, but seldom do we see an argument against these strategies. I found an article a few days ago that made me raise some eyebrows.
sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/05/06/customers-complain-bofa-is-drilling-safe-deposit-boxes-and-losing-valuables/
So of course, being me i hyper focused in and found a few more articles worth a look at:
www.appraisers.org/all-about-appraisers-and-appraisals/consumer-library/article/2013/06/10/how-safe-is-your-safe-deposit-box-
patch.com/california/shermanoaks/bank-ordered-pay-sherman-oaks-woman-whose-safe-deposit-box-was-looted
www.marketwatch.com/story/a-safe-deposit-box-is-not-the-safest-place-to-stash-your-cash
There are plenty of forum posts out there (other than this one) that talk about this same issue. It does happen, and it’s devastating to a collector. Not to mention these same safety deposit boxes are more susceptible to fire and water related damages than a home safe is (depending on your bank’s fire suppression systems).
So is nothing safe?
Well, to be honest, no nothing is 100% guaranteed. And what these links are, are insanely rare, so rare in fact they make the news. Take this posting as a food for thought posting. Some great takeaways from these news links are to take pictures, keep records, inventory your items, check your boxes somewhat frequently.

As with everything I write, this is open to discussion. I look forward to everyone’s thoughts on the matter.

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My biggest knock against them is that I just want to have my babies in my home available to be looked over whenever I please.

Big gun safes are pretty cool too. I don’t like going to banks and dealing with people either.

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For some folks, that’s what works for them. Some people view their collections daily and really take a lot of joy in that.

I don’t trust other people in general for something they are not invested in.

I know a few people with high value collections that prefer this route, I don’t know what type of safes they use or anything but they look similar to this and are fixed to concrete floors. You open the safe and everything is on display and nicely lit, it’s pretty cool.

Edit: Argument against this is obviously in a home invasion they’re gonna make you open the safe.

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Get an upper safe deposit box so any flooding won’t reach it.

I currently have 3 safe deposit boxes in two different banks. As soon as a larger box becomes available I’ll combine the 2 into one and be left with two in two different branches.

This procedure just started. Both bank policy’s are you check in with drivers license and bank card. Then they escort you to your box, take your key, and open it themselves. Then you can use the privacy room and when finished they come and lock the door on your box.
Not sure why they do all this now but it’s very safe and doesn’t bother me.

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The best safety is always inssurance.

I prefer to keep them at home, but I have them stored in a place that looks like just junk.

I’d rather Someone take the shiny lightweight electronics, but if they do find my stash of cards at least I’ll be covered. I dont have anything uber rare that can’t be easily replaced.

I worked in a branch for one of the largest private banks in the country, and I can tell you first and foremost - SDBs are taken very, very seriously. And although we were a private bank, we had more than enough branches to be mistaken for a public bank, therefore sometimes policies and procedures were naturally based off of the public bank norm.

Granted, we were a bank, therefore you would expect everything to be handled with the utmost care and preciseness. But, people are human, and humans are far from perfect, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some aspects of daily banking are given more leeway than other. Safety Deposit Boxes are not one of them.

After all, there are 2 things that are not allowed in SDBs (and this is a federal law) - firearms and $$$… for obvious reasons - taxes and safety. And the protocol to verify identity you mentioned, is exactly the same we always followed. Even if I knew a customer, or if he/she forgot to grab something and came back to their box 5 minutes later, it had to be documented and I had to verify identity.

But more times than not, a customer asked for assistance with their box, or refused to go into a private room, stating it would only take a minute, or had contents so heavy they simply needed assistance moving it. Some customers you naturally became friendly with on the teller-line, would insist on showing you something in their box - and a lot of the time it was just stacks of cash.

Yet the irony in all of it is that, not only are we not allowed to know what is in somebody’s box, but employees could be (and occasionally were) punished, investigated or fired just for discussing the contents of somebody’s box. So, really, the “law” prohibiting the contents of SDBs is really a joke.

Granted, I never saw a large SDB with a couple of shiny AK47s in it; that may have been a more serious matter. But lets just say that even if “Mr. Ultron” (sorry watching Avengers right now) waved his open box of 7 figures in my face, I best not mention it, even if the legality of it were in question.

So to capitalize on @KingPokemon point - rest assured SDB’s are very, very secure in a private or public bank in the United States (I cannot vouche for other countries, as I do not know their procedures, law, etc.). Obviously these customers who chose to share some contents of their boxes may have put themselves at some sort of risk, but that was ultimately their own choice. But honestly, even branch employees know that they see only half of what goes on behind the scenes, so even the ones that may even consider going ‘rogue’ know they would really be digging their own grave. Banks have 100x more security than their tightest pair of underwear.

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Just have a dummy safe with less valuable stuff inside of it in a slightly obvious place.

My grandpa used to say “Great minds think alike…but so do weak minds” lol

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This is true