Most interesting or valuable item/s found in a locked safe or vault?!

[72FJ40]

For years the most I found in any safe was 27 cents. A couple of months ago I was asked to open a safe that had been stored in a old store building owner purchased many years ago; safe had been locked since the mid 1960's. It contained rolls of old coins back to 1910, silver dollars, proof sets, etc.

[Parautoptic]

I once arranged access at much inconvenience to a building in which was a floor safe that I had been given the key to. There was one penny in it.

In the early 1970s I knew a man who was a career criminal (he was no stranger to prison even then and subsequently served 15 years in Parkhurst.) At the time in question he specialised in burgling schools, this was in the days before alarm systems etc. were common. One day he removed a safe from the office of a local school, transported it back to his home and opened it with oxy-acetylene kit. Expecting to find the week`s dinner money for several hundred children he actually found two and a half pence and a bottle of port.... The school had banked the money a day early!

For years the most I found in any safe was 27 cents. A couple of months ago I was asked to open a safe that had been stored in a old store building owner purchased many years ago; safe had been locked since the mid 1960's. It contained rolls of old coins back to 1910, silver dollars, proof sets, etc.

[Warren63]

I once arranged access at much inconvenience to a building in which was a floor safe that I had been given the key to. There was one penny in it.

In the early 1970s I knew a man who was a career criminal (he was no stranger to prison even then and subsequently served 15 years in Parkhurst.) At the time in question he specialised in burgling schools, this was in the days before alarm systems etc. were common. One day he removed a safe from the office of a local school, transported it back to his home and opened it with oxy-acetylene kit. Expecting to find the week`s dinner money for several hundred children he actually found two and a half pence and a bottle of port.... The school had banked the money a day early!

Like Parautoptic I too knew a career safe cracker and he had found a full set of solid gold false teeth, top and bottom. There were no cash for gold shops in the 70s but could you imagine having them sitting in the shop window.

[chubbbramah]

Two 19C square corner safes discarded in the 1950's from a stone quarry had black powder dust sifted into all the crevices inside, and the drawer, from half a century of storing safety fuse. I have two Cotterill locks, and one original key which does not fit either of these locks.

There were no plates on the safes, and the locks are actually intended as drawer locks.