Yale Treasury Key

[Brian Morland]

This one of the non-European items from the collection and was hoping for some insight. It is of course a key from Yale’s treasury bank lock. This key has an overall length of 5 ¾ " and the bit has 8 removable steps. The steps, which are numbered, may be reassembled in any order. Other versions of the key have also been noted, i.e. shorter length, fewer steps on the bit and that are also solid. I know (from "American Genius") that there were two versions of the lock and wondered if that accounted for the differences. Another point that may also be known by users is are there any known instances where the lock was used by others than the Treasury Dept. I know that it’s a very rare lock and content myself with at least having an example of the key but live in hopes that a lock may turn up one day.