Valuables Home Storage

[stand@desk]

Hi,

Would love to hear about what Forum Members do in regard to home storage of their valuables..
In terms of valuables, I would consider items such as passports, physical gold and silver, flash drives with important data, valuable documents and keepsakes, other..

-Do you have a safe at home, what do you keep in it?
-Do you have any creative secret hiding places to safely stash your valuables?
-Do you invest in a bank safety deposit box to store valuables?
-Or do you have lockable rooms, containers, etc for safe storage.
-Other

Thanks to all who respond!

[Ego]

We don't have much in the way of valuables but we use one of these Pacsafe Travelsafes both at home and on the road. I keep it packed with passports, cash, checks, and other stuff we wouldn't want to leave behind. It doubles as our valuables bug-out bag in case of emergency.

[Riggerjack]

I have a old fashioned safe. Cuz I'm geeky like that. One inch plate steel, with 1 1/2 inch face and doors, with room to surround it with 4 inches of concrete and surprises. Sounds paranoid, huh?
I picked it up at auction for $75, without combinations. My wife (also a geek) reverse engineered the locks. We cleaned and painted it, then installed it in a tight place.
I have birth certificates, expired passports, and old ID in there. And a few cheap pistols. There is going to be plenty of frustration and damage and disappointment should anyone actually break in. It would be worth it just for the video of them trying!
BTW, every burglar knows safes are great targets, but usually they take the safe with them. It's easier to break a safe at home. If noise and time aren't an issue, most residential safes won't stand up to pry bars. Mount your safe, in a place with limited working room. Bolted down in the back of a closet under the stairs is ideal. Look up YouTube videos of breaking into safes for an idea of what to expect from a safe.

[riparian]

I don't have many things that are valuable. What I do have, I spread out into different hiding spaces.

I did know a very wise and wealthy woman once upon a time who had a double safe system - a dummy safe for thieves to take and a seriously hidden and installed safe for reals.

[Sclass]

I did know a very wise and wealthy woman once upon a time who had a double safe system - a dummy safe for thieves to take and a seriously hidden and installed safe for reals.

She doesnt sound so wise telling you (anyone for that matter) about her system.

I had an acquaintance who owned restaurants who hoarded cash in safes. His daughter bragged about their decoy safe after they got hit. She said the crooks were really dumb and got the decoy. I chuckled because one, they were probably somebody they knew, and two, now they'd be back.

I have a fire proof file box but I leave the key in it. I don't want anyone finding it and getting some crazy ideas over my passport and social security card.

[henrik]

expired passports, and old ID in there

Why?

[JohnnyH]

No home safe, but I might put one under a false concrete lid in a house I'm living in semi-permanently. Not that I'd put much faith in it if it's discovered. 99% of safes/locks/fences cannot keep out someone with a little time and a little intelligence.

I do not keep much in valuable items but what I do have I rely mostly on creative hiding spots and bank box... Less than 1% of my net, so not a big deal if I am robbed. My best defense is appearing to be relatively poor and being a minimalist.

[akratic]

I use the same Pacsafe as Ego while traveling (permanently traveling at the moment) and it's great!

At "home" I do have a creative solution or two for a bunch of 1oz gold coins.

[George the original one]

expired passports, and old ID in there

Why?

In the USA, an expired USA passport is official proof of your existence. Can be used when renewing driver's license or needing to verify that you can legally be employed.

[Riggerjack]

I have a pretty vast collection of corporate security badges, should I ever need to get back to any of those places, getting renewed is usually easier than reissued. Our passports went in there, then expired. I'm not a big traveler. Password reminders for my online profiles are there, too. I'm not a big security freak. I know that residential doors don't stand up to 2 kicks. I could fix that by installing commercial steel fire doors, or accept the risk. I choose to accept the risk. Lots of folks in my neighborhood are home during the day, and most own firearms. We have very low crime rates. That being said, there's always some teen looking to show the world that he lives by his own laws. The safe is for him. It was also a chance to add another feature to this house when I sell, for very little money.
Tl15 safes are much more secure than residential sheet metal safes. Picture the tooling to get through 4 inches of concrete and an inch of steel. I'm thinking one of those gas powered carbide bladed saws in junkyards. And there are ways to slow even them down. Lead and aluminum ingots cast in the concrete will ruin the blades, etc. But for every bit of defense, you are just adding time/noise/difficulty to the process of ripping you off. You can't stop a determined man with passive defense.
My active defense is to not have portable wealth.

[workathome]

So you have a couple "layers" to the security

1) Make the valuables time-costly to remove.
a. Hard to find, decoy, etc.
b. Hard to move (lag bolts, weigh it down, difficult to remove-from location - not the garage!)
c. Make sure steel is thick enough, surround in concrete, key and combo system, etc.
d. Additional layers to bypass, such as behind a heavy-duty fire-proof door.

2) Make the monitoring system very difficult to disable with instant notifications (to you, third party, or both).
a. Motion sensor or cameras, glass break sensors, etc.
b. Backup battery for power outages
c. System also difficult to reach/hidden so being able to disable it before notification goes out is unlikely.
d. Redundant notification systems, so that if phone line/cable is cut, it could use cellphone backup.

But yeah, even then they'd just need you to be gone for a day, oblivious neighbors, a powerful cellphone jammer, etc. At least it would stop anyone unprepared or stupid.

[Riggerjack]

Most residential burglars are the stupid/rebellious teenager/tweaker type. Think in terms of discouraging them. I wouldn't recommend a rated safe for anyone who didn't have a solid need for one. I don't, but I got it cheap. But safes are targets. Bolt them down. ID theft is a hassle, so I'd think that was worth getting a fire safe to avoid.

[Stahlmann]

She doesnt sound so wise telling you (anyone for that matter) about her system.

I had an acquaintance who owned restaurants who hoarded cash in safes. His daughter bragged about their decoy safe after they got hit. She said the crooks were really dumb and got the decoy. I chuckled because one, they were probably somebody they knew, and two, now they'd be back.

I know it's inappropiate to ask and show lack of my effort... but how to solve this? I've recently saw confession of one of most prominient (or marketed...) computer security guy in my country... but he said deliberately upfront he won't say anything about physical security. For the rest TLDL use big tech solutions, because they have biggest resources to hire best talents, mass market effect for many things (jokingly like half of the people use MS mail, half use gmail, they can detect spam/frauds instantly).

I have a fire proof file box but I leave the key in it. I don't want anyone finding it and getting some crazy ideas over my passport and social security card.

I don't get this. So you put one key inside, used second to lock and then discarded it pernamently? You plan brute force it after house fire assuming it survives damages? Why won't average bulgar do this? I know in such cases oneliners won't solve possible problems, but... the solution here is to have multiple same boxes and this way keep potential thieves in hand?

I started thinking about it as recently idea of U2F keys come to my knowledge (BTW why everything is so expensive?!!!??!). As uninfomed layman I didn't get it why it safer than strong password and 2FA sms (yes, then I checked reasoning of other side. I still don't get this I'm contrarian by nature). "They" recommend to have one key with me (it seems easy to loose it) and second in safe place in home (it's easy to steal it or forget about it). The same with "common" knowledge about VPNs. If it's possible to sniff client (my pc) and the server (every site I visit), why adding something in the middle wouldn't make possible to sniff it too? We also leave credit card data while buying this service... Yes, it boils down how much resources will agents use against you. Yes, I see with my paronoia everything is staged and controlled by glowies

[zbigi]

As uninfomed layman I didn't get it why it safer than strong password and 2FA sms

Text messages are not very secure. They can be intercepted either via "identity theft" (where somebody pretends to be you and obtains a new sim card for your phone number from the telecom company, so that they can receive the 2FA text messages). Also, from what I've read they're not really encrypted (they're an ancient tech from the nineties), so can be just intercepted from the air.

Using a smartphone app as the second factor seems safer to me, at least on iOS.

[theanimal]

I don't get this. So you put one key inside, used second to lock and then discarded it pernamently? You plan brute force it after house fire assuming it survives damages? Why won't average bulgar do this? I know in such cases oneliners won't solve possible problems, but... the solution here is to have multiple same boxes and this way keep potential thieves in hand?

Keeping it in means that he is keeping the key in the lock on the outside, not keeping the key locked up inside.

[Sclass]

Smart animal. Yeah I didn’t describe that clearly. I lock the safe but I keep the key in the keyhole. My goal is to protect my documents from catching on fire. No jewels in there. If a curious housekeeper wants to look inside that’s fine. Just boring papers and passports.

Unfortunately after being around 50 years I’ve heard too many stories from close friends being forced to open their safes by robbers. In a couple of cases it got ugly. So I don’t want anyone to find my little fire safe and wonder what’s in there. They can look for themselves and move on.