I pay about $400/year for $1.5 million in commercial property liability insurance for a small office space. And the risk of somebody "slipping" and collecting $1.5 million is far, far more likely.
Every time you drive your car or bicycle you take the risk of running over a star athlete or CEO, and facing a $10 million judgement on lost earnings.
Anyhow, banks will typically require liability disclaimers from deposit box renters, so their exposure is de minimis (probably of freak incident * probability of ineffective disclaimer).
I'm guessing the real reason for not wanting these deposit boxes is the same reason banks are shedding branch staff--labor is costly; and the same reason retailers spent the past few decades selling and leasing back store locations--inflate their quarterly earnings reports by dumping accumulated real estate assets.
Why would one need labor to operate a safe-deposit box business? Can't you just have a very secure warehouse full of boxes, with warehouse robots that will grab those boxes and put them into a drop slot when someone taps the appropriate smart card?
Before anyone says that that's impractical/too expensive: there are robotic parking garages that do this for cars, and that's a much higher OpEx.
drones , remote weapons, surveillance tech, “lingering weapons”, has shown that physical security absolutely does not boil down to “ capable men with guns”.
> Because physical security boils down to capable men with guns, whether that's private security, the police, or godfather type arrangements.
>> drones , remote weapons, surveillance tech, “lingering weapons”, has shown that physical security absolutely does not boil down to “ capable men with guns”.
How is that disproving the parents point?
Capable men with drones is not meaningfully different to capable men with guns, or pointy sticks for that matter.
Doubtless. Even so, the article does mention that safe deposit box insurance is available from third party providers. I don't know about the rates, but I'd imagine if anything it's probably cheaper to insure a half million dollars worth of valuables stuck in a bank vault than the same items stored in your bedroom. Although there's also the possibility of including the items in the box as part of a homeowner's insurance policy. [0] The problem being that some things people put in boxes have a sentimental value that makes them irreplaceable. You can be compensated for Grammy's brooch but it's not the same as Grammy's brooch.
> I'm guessing the real reason for not wanting these deposit boxes is the same reason banks are shedding branch staff--labor is costly;
It's because most business schools teach business administrators to seek rent for doing nothing.
Making anything, providing any service or really doing anything other than pure rent seeking is an opportunity to be beaten by those who care enough to do it better and so should be avoided.
The ideal business would be one where capital is rented out for maximum return without having to think about how to get the best return.
To a remote man with a spreadsheet everything has a cost and nothing has a value.
The Banks would prefer you to pay a fee so that you can donate your valuables to that Bank.
If you don't control those assets, they are no longer yours.
You doubt that? Just try to access that safety deposit box when that bank is closed for the night. One day that Bank will close for the night and not reopen for quite a while if at all. What will you do then?
There are lots of instances where Banks and/or other financial institutions close for the night 'as usual', but then never reopen. What happens to all those accounts that are never able to be accessed again by their 'owners'?
Examples: Lehmann Brothers in New York, Pyramid in Australia, that Scottish bank in England some 10 years back, Barings Bank, etc, etc. And there was also the Savings and Loan fiasco in the US around 1990.
Most people lost the lot, or at the very least lost a goodly proportion of their assets.
That is so true. And there is many a husband (or wife) who has come home after work to find the house completely stripped bare, and the spouse nowhere to be found.
While I wouldn't put things that could single-handedly grant access in there - since you likely won't be checking on if it's been compromised that frequently - I think it's still great for things like backup 2FA codes or recovery passwords for encrypted media that's stored separately. Make breaking into the box one of the things an attacker would need to do.
I would not put my life savings in jewelry or something in there, but having an off-premise spot for emergency backup codes and stuff like that? Where's a better option?
You don't need to particularly safeguard the credentials to get to your encrypted blob, they can be in a gmail email you sent to your friends and/or family. They can't read the content but they can give you a copy.
How do you remember where your
safe deposit box is after four months in hospital recovering from a cerebral trauma?
Yea, a friend of mine's younger brother suffered a stroke in college, and couldn't remember his laptop password. My understanding is that at least some of the important files were encrypted.
Best normal option is a locked container with a relative. In scenarios where there is a particular risk or a lot of money potentially involved, store important documents with an attorney.
Having seen the number of attorneys (even - no, especially - at the partner level) who leave their computers unlocked and who push back against measures like 2FA, if the document is high enough value, please spend some time vetting them first.
Just a note that I was advised by my lawyer (in the UK) that I shouldn't give him these kinds of details for next-of-kin access after my death as they need to go through probate before they can get hold of them, and that can take a loooooong time.
Fire proof safes aren't that expensive. They probably don't stop physical attack, but are good enough in semi-trusted environment and cover for two of the important risks, fire and water invasion.
The "not very expensive" ones are also not very fire-proof, unfortunately.
A family friend learned this the hard way when a sizeable amount of cash went up in flames and his $300 Sentry safe was a melted mess, the contents forever lost.
There is no such thing as a "fire proof safe". They are rated to maintain a certain temperature delta inside for a certain length of time given a fire outside. In the common situation where a house lights up and the structure collapses with a bunch of hot debris burying the safe, thermodynamics wins.
Wells Fargo — which in recent years has admitted to systematically ripping off customers with fake accounts, hidden fees and a variety of unwanted and unnecessary financial products — didn’t follow that law.
I normally don't like the NYT and I know it continues to get worse, but we need more of this calling our bullshit plainly. I wish we had this in the Canadian media, most of our big companies (and all our banks) are criminal, better to just say so and not tiptoe around it
On the contrary, I wish the media would not present Wells Fargo as a uniquely bad actor. The only difference between them and the other big banks is that Wells Fargo got caught.
Reading an article like this, you might think you would be better off with BofA or Citibank or Chase, but that’s not the case. They are all the same — constrained by a banking culture and a regulatory regime that forces them to all be the same.
I didn’t have any issues like that with my Wells Fargo checking account either. But apparently they happened, so one person’s experience is not exactly useful here.
What an absurd retort. No one can prove a negative (prove your bank hasn't scammed other people), but you can prove that Wells Fargo was scamming people. You can assert anything you like, but it is not the onus of others to prove you wrong.
I’ve had experience with three credit unions and all nickel-and-dined me with ridiculous fees. I’ve been with Bank of America for twenty years and never had any problems. I figured that if there’s a risk of BS fees at the credit union, I might as well use the bank and watch my back. At least the bank has more locations.
I didn't take it that way, I just thought when they were describing WF they didn't mince words, which I appreciate. I didn't see any implication that others are better. In some way, saying they all do it would dilute the criticism more.
Everyone in the media knows that when you single out a particular company, or person, or politician for criticism it makes their competitors look better. Nobody who works at a major news organization is unaware of this.
This is an absurd take. What would you have them do aside from call out a publicly bad actor explicitly? Seems like you are bending over backwards for a bad take.
In the media you don't get to "just" call someone or a company out. It inevitably makes the readers imagine comparisons in their mind. It is a status play: by lowering the status of one player in an industry, you implicitly raise the the status of the others.
Everyone who works in the media industry knows that will happen -- and I know some people who work in that industry. Even teenagers do this on social media all the time, based on an instinctive understanding of social status.
Take it or leave it, or even better, provide a rebuttal with real evidence rather than a childish emotional response!
Having banked with Wells Fargo and been cheated by them in various ways, I'd say they are in fact a uniquely bad actor - far worse than any other comparable large bank - and that's taking into account that such a baseline is quite a bad one.
Let's say you steal a famous painting worth millions, how are you going to resell it? These are unique pieces, people will know you are selling a stolen good or a fake, no way around it. And the illegitimate owner of the painting will have a hard time enjoying it too, if you show it off, you will get a lot of unwanted attention. In the end, it is a great way of pissing off many people, probably not a great way to make money.
Maybe you can steal and remelt gold items, but still, I don't think that museums make such good targets, not fungible enough ;)
Safe deposit boxes on the other hand often store easy to resell valuables like cash and gold. I fact, I think it would be a terrible idea to put these in museums as it would make them more attractive targets.
Safe deposit boxes are the cloud equivalent to having a safe, you pay someone to manage and pull security and you are saved from having to do it yourself.
The idea that they can change the terms from the contract you signed is ridiculous. I don’t mind a liability cap for the banks but changing that under you? Insane.
It's different when the contract is a lease whose original term has expired. If it were for a year, for example, perhaps both sides adhered to the contract, but after that each side might have an opportunity to renegotiate the next year-long term.
Clickwrap agreements are annoying, and devilish when combined with an ongoing service.
Come to think of it though, burying it in the ground is an option even if you have a little city lot. Would have worked out a lot better for the guy in this article. It’s safe from many hazards and casual crooks. One problem is keeping it dry.
Waterproof boxes are pretty bombproof and you could always nest them. That said, I wouldn't have a lot of confidence burying something in an urban environment. And, even if you're out in the country someplace, it's probably best reserved for things you want to keep physically safe long-term without frequent access.
Burying stuff is a decent option is there's something you want kept safe for decades, but if you want regular access to the stash, it's completely infeasible.
Nothing is 100% secure, but I have opted for a high-quality gun/fire safe that's bolted to the foundation of my home (in a gated community), and protected by multiple monitored alarm systems and cameras. The safe has a lot more room than any bank's box would, it's cheaper in the long-run, and IMHO (especially after reading the fine article) more secure. Also, it's got a S&G spin-dial lock that I trust a lot more than any electronic garbage.
Where in the house is the safe located? I saw a video some years ago that made a fairly compelling case for locating the safe in a pantry or laundry room or anywhere other than the master bedroom, master closet, master bath or home office.
While it would be nice to have something that could withstand a casual burglar, the more likely threat to my stuff is a house fire.
Where is the best for a safe to survive in a burning building, but also not be visible to anyone and remain thermally neutral?
Fire safes are passive thermal sinks that reflect and damp heat transfer for as long as possible before ultimately turning into a giant heavy toaster oven. I wonder if active fire safes are a thing? Imagine the security of a safe but with an armored thermal pipe sticking out the top that goes to a heat sink somewhere outdoors. Kind of like AC but for precious documents / grandpa’s watch. I guess you’d want it to fuse and fall off if the pipe started piping heat into the safe.
I have a safe in the wall behind a permanent bookshelf in a random room of my house. One has to remove several shelves and a false back to get at it. A safe is best hidden - otherwise seeing it is an incentive to rob you. My children don't know it exists.
I keep only semi-valuable documents in the honeypot safe. Things like flex spending account receipts, password to my personal github account, and free car-wash vouchers.
Affordable amount of cash in one seems most logical solution. And maybe some dress jewelry. Easy enough for burglar to grab and run away, without too much damage on anything else.
Honeypot safe only works if the real one is well concealed. So then it's only worth having if it's somehow known/assumed that you have a safe at all. (Otherwise just leave it well-concealed and you can say 'I don't have a safe, there's some cash in my wallet and a little jewellery in the bedroom' just as effectively as 'Here is the safe it is definitely the real one'.)
I can sympathize but it's odd that the article is calling for a federal law. . Shows a complete lack of research and understanding of the "United States" and the roles of the federal and state governments, or just a clear a bias toward federalizing everything. The law that governs the bank safe deposit boxes is state law. This is pure personal proprety law of bailment and has nothing to do with interstate commerce or banking. I mean you can't get much more local than keeping your personal items in a box. There's no reason to have federal law apply. Federal government does interstate commerce, national security, and a few other things relating to the country as a whole and that's it. Having federal law govern safe deposit for boxes is like saying the federal government should be policing whether parking attendendanta bang up or rob the car you leave them or restaurants should be federally liable for hat and coat checks. State law has always governed the responsibilities of the person who takes care of something you leave them. it's property law 101. The federal government has no business and no jurisdiction being involved in enforcing bailment responsibiliies or rewriting contracts. It's not lack of interest by the feds it's lack of jurisdiction. There's no interstate commerce going on in a safe deposit box. If the feds need to step in here we might as well get rid of state laws and states entirely.
I was thinking of putting my social security card + the master password to my bitwarden account in a safe deposit box. Good to know that's not a good idea.
Shamir secret sharing is a rigorous way to do it. Maybe for this purpose just spreading catenable chunks and some duplicates would be fine though.
(It would 'just' mean one being discovered weakens the overall password, if the finder knows what it is. With SSS knowing any less than all of the shares doesn't reveal any part of the secret.)
I used to work for a small IT company based in London on Hatton Garden a few years ago.
At lunch time we used to stroll down to the food market on Leather Lane for a quick bite. It was busy like a bee hive with people working in the city and I absolutely loved it.
I remember walking past all those glitzy jewelry stores on Hatton Garden and staring at the various stuff they had on display - thinking I would never want to work in that business given the risks involved.
Then during the Easter bank holiday in 2015 the famous heist happened at number 88.
I've never seen so many TV vans reporting from the site for weeks on end. It felt completely surreal.
That event confirmed for me that concentrating so many valuables in such a small space (even if tightly guarded) is too risky.
Your home could in theory be burgled but it will never be as attractive as a room full of deposit boxes.
I used to work around there. Couldn't agree more. On two different occasions over the course of a year I spotted robberies about to occur and reported them to the police. On one other occasion I spotted a surveillance team following individuals there. No way in hell would I wanna work in those stores. Not worth it.
This makes me wonder if simply burying what you have is a better option. One of my long standing goals is to buy some raw land for hunting and camping, like 50+ acres.
I could easily bury several caches of valuables, that only my immediate family knows about, and let nature regrow over it.
I mean, what are the chances that a rando stranger is going to be in the middle of nowhere with a metal detector?
Yeah, but many people have buried their money and later found it deteriorated beyond use. Make sure to use some good containers if you go that route :)
> Common causes of damage are fire, water damage, chemicals, explosives, damage caused by animals (including consumption of the currency) or damage from extended burying of the currency [1].
When you have their volumes of cash its impossible to launder it.
They don't burry their cash because it makes sense to do so. They do it because it would be impossible to buy that much gold. Or much of anything, really. I wouldn't be surprised if, after expenses, the Treasury is the largest beneficiary of the drug trade through seignorage
One of the best choices is PVC plumbing pipe (schedule 40). It's designed to be buried, and with glued end caps, it's also (obviously by design) waterproof. It has to be cut open, and it obviously wouldn't be good for storing huge amounts of stuff.
Don’t take your cell phone with you when you do the burying. And only tell your family about it with hand written notes. And make sure they know not to look up any information related to the caches. And that they know to never speak of the caches near an internet enabled device.
Also, don’t disturb the ground in any visible way. Just comparing google maps satellite imagery is enough to uncover your hiding place. Probably better to disturb many places and only hide valuables in a few of them.
Better take some sort of GPS device, though. Otherwise you may never find it again. Who was the British chap that buried a bunch of silver before WWI and never found it?
And at that point, I ask what are you burying that is so uniquely valuable that you don't need to access? I guess there are circumstances around cash or coinage that you don't want the government to know about--though that's increasingly hard to spend in large quantities today.
And to what degree to you trust your family with this secret information?
I know someone with considerable net worth who converted a good chunk of it into buried treasure, some of which I understand he has literally buried in places, and some he has squirrelled away under the floorboards or similar.
He put a fair bit of thought into:
A) Not forgetting where it is
B) it being highly unlikely anyone would ever stumble across it and
C) Ensuring his heirs find out about it should anything ever happen to him.
C) was the tricky part, as he’s a lawyer, and therefore doesn’t trust lawyers, and he’s of a generation where technical solutions don’t appeal, and is ultimately the point of risk for anyone trying this route - either you accept that it crosses the Styx with you, or you tell someone, and take the risk therein.
His view on C is that if his kids aren’t smart enough to find it, as he’s apparently left plenty of clues, then that’s their problem, not his. Part of his reason for being obtuse is that apparently in the jurisdictions he has concealed his wealth, buried treasure is taxed far more lightly than inheritance, and he wants them to have reasonable ignorance and deniability.
So at my last job, I did engineering/land development for cannabis farmers. Everyone I knew had a story about burying money and forgetting where it was buried and being unable to find it.
Also, lots of cash was recovered destroyed.
Now... One thing I will say about that is, it's harder to find a good spot than you'd think, and good spots are more predictable than you'd think. I've notice several such cash stashes. I worked with a guy that had an even better eye for it.
I assume that if you bury a box of any size, you disturb the ground quite a bit. You also probably don't bury it in a random open field but near some landmark you can easily locate.
There are signs and landmarks. Trees, stumps, rocks, corners, etc.
Sometimes people make a mark to make it more recoverable, like a notch in a tree, or a topped tree.
Especially when a big part of my job is figuring out what the terrain and vegetation looked like before disturbance for restoration work. I can see 30-100+ years of history on a forested property just by looking around or occasionally reading old surveyors descriptions and stuff.
Beyond that, after you've seen a few, you start to get an eye for the type of spot people like to choose. People are very bad random behavior generators.
> Banks increasingly regard safe deposit boxes as more of a headache than they’re worth. They’re expensive to build, complicated to maintain and not very lucrative.
I think this article answers the question as to "why". I remember about 15 years ago the bank by my house opened up and passed on an offer that people who opened one of their high-deposit checking accounts would get a Safe Deposit Box for free. At the age I was, I really had nothing of particular value to store there and it seemed like a silly thing to get but I was curious.
Reading the leasing agreement, the bank made it very clear that the "Safe Deposit Box" provided far less assurance that my (non-existent) valuables would be protected than they would in a good safe in my home. The paperwork reminded me that purchasing insurance for the Safe Deposit Box[0] was a necessity and the bank would not be liable for losses.
It's basically a product where the entire thing the customer wants to buy, security at the expense of convenience, is precisely what they are not selling you "despite the name". To make up for that problem, apparently, my local bank thought it'd be best to give them away to people, like me, who have no use for one. Of course it's not lucrative! People who would be willing to pay a reasonable sum of money to protect their assets aren't going to rent a Safe Deposit Box with a "your stuff will probably be there, but get insurance" guarantee.
[0] Do they make Safe Deposit Box insurance or do you add those valuables to your homeowners? I never found out.
As the article says, they're sort of a legacy thing. Some people may still use them for jewelry they wear to their annual gala or, as in the case described, valuable collectibles that they don't want to get rid of but don't want to keep around the house either. But historically people would have things like bearer bonds, paper stock certificates, gold coins, or just a lot of cash that they needed to put somewhere safe. And that's a lot less common these days.
Wife worked at a few banks. With so many branches closing or downsizing operations, if they decide to stop offering boxes, that means opening them up if they can't reach you.
161 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] threadNo wonder banks are getting out of this business.
Every time you drive your car or bicycle you take the risk of running over a star athlete or CEO, and facing a $10 million judgement on lost earnings.
Anyhow, banks will typically require liability disclaimers from deposit box renters, so their exposure is de minimis (probably of freak incident * probability of ineffective disclaimer).
I'm guessing the real reason for not wanting these deposit boxes is the same reason banks are shedding branch staff--labor is costly; and the same reason retailers spent the past few decades selling and leasing back store locations--inflate their quarterly earnings reports by dumping accumulated real estate assets.
Why would one need labor to operate a safe-deposit box business? Can't you just have a very secure warehouse full of boxes, with warehouse robots that will grab those boxes and put them into a drop slot when someone taps the appropriate smart card?
Before anyone says that that's impractical/too expensive: there are robotic parking garages that do this for cars, and that's a much higher OpEx.
Because physical security boils down to capable men with guns, whether that's private security, the police, or godfather type arrangements.
>> drones , remote weapons, surveillance tech, “lingering weapons”, has shown that physical security absolutely does not boil down to “ capable men with guns”.
How is that disproving the parents point?
Capable men with drones is not meaningfully different to capable men with guns, or pointy sticks for that matter.
https://uploads.website.storedge.com/60281063-f09b-41fb-be8f...
The allure of a bank is that it’s a bank and it is seen as secure because of the self interest in the bank itself being secure.
[0] https://www.geico.com/living/home/home-protection/safe-keepi...
It's because most business schools teach business administrators to seek rent for doing nothing.
Making anything, providing any service or really doing anything other than pure rent seeking is an opportunity to be beaten by those who care enough to do it better and so should be avoided.
The ideal business would be one where capital is rented out for maximum return without having to think about how to get the best return.
To a remote man with a spreadsheet everything has a cost and nothing has a value.
To be fair, renting out metal boxes you already own doesn't exactly sound labour-intensive.
If you don't control those assets, they are no longer yours.
You doubt that? Just try to access that safety deposit box when that bank is closed for the night. One day that Bank will close for the night and not reopen for quite a while if at all. What will you do then?
Are you talking about Fridays? Or something else?
Examples: Lehmann Brothers in New York, Pyramid in Australia, that Scottish bank in England some 10 years back, Barings Bank, etc, etc. And there was also the Savings and Loan fiasco in the US around 1990.
Most people lost the lot, or at the very least lost a goodly proportion of their assets.
It's not an issue on the United States. Many countries have similar insurance programs
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Co...
Safe Deposit Boxes Aren’t Safe (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27109002 - May 2021 (6 comments)
Safe Deposit Boxes Aren't Safe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20545276 - July 2019 (143 comments)
Safe Deposit Boxes Aren’t Safe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20482077 - July 2019 (2 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
Keeping physical stuff safe is hard. Banks were specifically invented so that people didn't need to keep valuables on them.
I would not put my life savings in jewelry or something in there, but having an off-premise spot for emergency backup codes and stuff like that? Where's a better option?
How do you remember a strong passphrase after four months in hospital recovering from a cerebral trauma?
Emergency emergencies. Off-site physical backups are important too.
How do you remember where your safe deposit box is after four months in hospital recovering from a cerebral trauma?
There's no perfect solution.
Obviously.
A family friend learned this the hard way when a sizeable amount of cash went up in flames and his $300 Sentry safe was a melted mess, the contents forever lost.
This is not at all common today, imo.
Reading an article like this, you might think you would be better off with BofA or Citibank or Chase, but that’s not the case. They are all the same — constrained by a banking culture and a regulatory regime that forces them to all be the same.
Yet somehow smaller banks and credit unions don't have this problem. I've not had any issues like this with my Schwab checking account.
I can prove it didn’t rain yesterday where I live.
Everyone who works in the media industry knows that will happen -- and I know some people who work in that industry. Even teenagers do this on social media all the time, based on an instinctive understanding of social status.
Take it or leave it, or even better, provide a rebuttal with real evidence rather than a childish emotional response!
The relative status ye. But the absolute status of banks as a group decline.
E.g. used cars salesmen. A honest one's reputation are ruined from the moment they open the store due to bad actors.
Let's say you steal a famous painting worth millions, how are you going to resell it? These are unique pieces, people will know you are selling a stolen good or a fake, no way around it. And the illegitimate owner of the painting will have a hard time enjoying it too, if you show it off, you will get a lot of unwanted attention. In the end, it is a great way of pissing off many people, probably not a great way to make money.
Maybe you can steal and remelt gold items, but still, I don't think that museums make such good targets, not fungible enough ;)
Safe deposit boxes on the other hand often store easy to resell valuables like cash and gold. I fact, I think it would be a terrible idea to put these in museums as it would make them more attractive targets.
Clickwrap agreements are annoying, and devilish when combined with an ongoing service.
If you have land in the middle of nowhere you can bury shit in the ground. But that's not a realistic option for most people.
TL;DR warrantless search by government, seizure of presumed guilty until proven innocent findings.
It’s probably worse than you think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
Where is the best for a safe to survive in a burning building, but also not be visible to anyone and remain thermally neutral?
Fire safes are passive thermal sinks that reflect and damp heat transfer for as long as possible before ultimately turning into a giant heavy toaster oven. I wonder if active fire safes are a thing? Imagine the security of a safe but with an armored thermal pipe sticking out the top that goes to a heat sink somewhere outdoors. Kind of like AC but for precious documents / grandpa’s watch. I guess you’d want it to fuse and fall off if the pipe started piping heat into the safe.
I would think (no numbers to back it up) for most houses the risk of flooding is higher that the risk of burning down
Edit: oh crap, not again
I believed your safe could be real, until I read that heh.
Honeypot safe only works if the real one is well concealed. So then it's only worth having if it's somehow known/assumed that you have a safe at all. (Otherwise just leave it well-concealed and you can say 'I don't have a safe, there's some cash in my wallet and a little jewellery in the bedroom' just as effectively as 'Here is the safe it is definitely the real one'.)
(It would 'just' mean one being discovered weakens the overall password, if the finder knows what it is. With SSS knowing any less than all of the shares doesn't reveal any part of the secret.)
And there are various approaches to safeguarding passwords that don't involve writing it down in one place.
At lunch time we used to stroll down to the food market on Leather Lane for a quick bite. It was busy like a bee hive with people working in the city and I absolutely loved it.
I remember walking past all those glitzy jewelry stores on Hatton Garden and staring at the various stuff they had on display - thinking I would never want to work in that business given the risks involved.
Then during the Easter bank holiday in 2015 the famous heist happened at number 88.
I've never seen so many TV vans reporting from the site for weeks on end. It felt completely surreal.
That event confirmed for me that concentrating so many valuables in such a small space (even if tightly guarded) is too risky.
Your home could in theory be burgled but it will never be as attractive as a room full of deposit boxes.
Famous somewhere, but I hadn't heard of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatton_Garden_safe_deposit_bur...
Not too bad
I could easily bury several caches of valuables, that only my immediate family knows about, and let nature regrow over it.
I mean, what are the chances that a rando stranger is going to be in the middle of nowhere with a metal detector?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutilated_currency
They don't burry their cash because it makes sense to do so. They do it because it would be impossible to buy that much gold. Or much of anything, really. I wouldn't be surprised if, after expenses, the Treasury is the largest beneficiary of the drug trade through seignorage
Don’t take your cell phone with you when you do the burying. And only tell your family about it with hand written notes. And make sure they know not to look up any information related to the caches. And that they know to never speak of the caches near an internet enabled device.
Also, don’t disturb the ground in any visible way. Just comparing google maps satellite imagery is enough to uncover your hiding place. Probably better to disturb many places and only hide valuables in a few of them.
Edit: Yep, Turing - https://www.iflscience.com/alan-turing-buried-his-life-savin...
And to what degree to you trust your family with this secret information?
He put a fair bit of thought into:
A) Not forgetting where it is B) it being highly unlikely anyone would ever stumble across it and C) Ensuring his heirs find out about it should anything ever happen to him.
C) was the tricky part, as he’s a lawyer, and therefore doesn’t trust lawyers, and he’s of a generation where technical solutions don’t appeal, and is ultimately the point of risk for anyone trying this route - either you accept that it crosses the Styx with you, or you tell someone, and take the risk therein.
His view on C is that if his kids aren’t smart enough to find it, as he’s apparently left plenty of clues, then that’s their problem, not his. Part of his reason for being obtuse is that apparently in the jurisdictions he has concealed his wealth, buried treasure is taxed far more lightly than inheritance, and he wants them to have reasonable ignorance and deniability.
I'm pretty confident he will eventually die, one way or another.
> apparently in the jurisdictions he has concealed his wealth, buried treasure is taxed far more lightly than inheritance
Ah, so basically it's a case of wanting to evade the laws of the society he lives in.
And he's a lawyer? Unsurprising, but shameful nevertheless.
Also, lots of cash was recovered destroyed.
Now... One thing I will say about that is, it's harder to find a good spot than you'd think, and good spots are more predictable than you'd think. I've notice several such cash stashes. I worked with a guy that had an even better eye for it.
Now you've got me curious, can you elaborate?
There are signs and landmarks. Trees, stumps, rocks, corners, etc.
Sometimes people make a mark to make it more recoverable, like a notch in a tree, or a topped tree.
Especially when a big part of my job is figuring out what the terrain and vegetation looked like before disturbance for restoration work. I can see 30-100+ years of history on a forested property just by looking around or occasionally reading old surveyors descriptions and stuff.
Beyond that, after you've seen a few, you start to get an eye for the type of spot people like to choose. People are very bad random behavior generators.
Reading the leasing agreement, the bank made it very clear that the "Safe Deposit Box" provided far less assurance that my (non-existent) valuables would be protected than they would in a good safe in my home. The paperwork reminded me that purchasing insurance for the Safe Deposit Box[0] was a necessity and the bank would not be liable for losses.
It's basically a product where the entire thing the customer wants to buy, security at the expense of convenience, is precisely what they are not selling you "despite the name". To make up for that problem, apparently, my local bank thought it'd be best to give them away to people, like me, who have no use for one. Of course it's not lucrative! People who would be willing to pay a reasonable sum of money to protect their assets aren't going to rent a Safe Deposit Box with a "your stuff will probably be there, but get insurance" guarantee.
[0] Do they make Safe Deposit Box insurance or do you add those valuables to your homeowners? I never found out.