Safes, Mechanical or Biometric?

[Daniel]

Do you have a safe at home?

I'm going to need one.

I don't want a key. You have to know where the key is at all times.

I might like a mechanical safe. Thoughts and recommendations welcome.

I have some questions about biometric safes. What if the battery dies? Could a thief reach the battery and disable it? One of these might be convenient but I don't know how it works.

Thanks.

[AndyD]

Yes. Small, three turns of a dial type, fire rated.

Nothing wrong with a quality double-lock gun cabinet; get good practical storage size, but yes, keys have to be kept discretely separate.

Checking last year I found nearly all safes are now electronic with digital keypad. Mechanicals were special order.
N.B. safes are incredibly heavy and you get a tiny storage space. Ours is 12x12x10 inches inside and yet I can barely move it.
Safes also become very costly as size increases.

[Steve Miller]

No safes in our house but we do have a locking fireproof file cabinet. Wasn’t cheap to move it but it didn’t cost much at the used office furniture place. Uses a key but it’s hidden pretty well and the kids know where it is. In truth we rarely lock it. It’s mostly for fire/tornado.

A couple of the high end houses we worked on had two safes, the theory being that if someone threatens your life you’ll open the safe no matter how good it is.

One was usually in a wall behind a picture or something. In it would go things that appeared valuable but the owner didn’t care about. The second was completely hidden and would theoretically house things of greater value.

Realistically, a safe deposit box at a bank is probably the safest (see what I did there?) way to go