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  1. #11
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Location
    Alabama
    Posts
    4
    Country: United States

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    My dad was a locksmith for many years and opened many safes during that time and all the money he found in old safes never amounted to more than a few cents. One time he opened an old gov't surplus horizontal filing cabinet that had a bunch of gun targets in it. We set up a firing range in the back yard and my brother ad I became proficient marksmen. Thanks!!!

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    st Louis
    Posts
    23
    Country: United States

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    i was doing a pm at a bank once, when a teller asked if i could open a old cash vault of theirs. When i asked her what the combo is she said she didn't know it, but knew it just quit working one day. I told her to look around and find some combos that it could be, even if it doesn't work, get them and ill try them. At the end of the day I asked her if she found any. she gave me one combo said that is it the day it quit working, but it doesn't work.

    Walked up to the vault and the dial ring was loose, i adjusted it straight up and down, ran the combo and it popped. inside was uncut sheets of $1 and $2, it was a promo the gov ran back in the 50s. they where supposed to sell for like 15 bucks over cost, i talked them into selling me $300 of the 2s. :)

    we replaced an atm once, the guys where stripping it back at the office and found something like 600 bucks stuck behind a wiring harness.

    not a vault, but i found 4 one hundred dollar bills in the bottom a banks commercial drawer once. bank remembered arguing with there cust about how they don't have the money..... hate to have made that phone call.

    last summer, i was working on a night drop, found a radio shack back stuck behind some anti-fishing fingers, the bank remembered this, and said they money was deducted from the shacks employee paycheck and they had almost fired the employee over it

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Posts
    1,754
    Country: Wales

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    Quote Originally Posted by jgriner View Post
    i was working on a night drop, found a radio shack back stuck behind some anti-fishing fingers, the bank remembered this, and said they money was deducted from the shacks employee paycheck and they had almost fired the employee over it
    Reminds me of a job I did 20 years ago. Asked to move and reposition a big Tann bankers in one of the national high street jewellers here in the UK. It hadn't been installed right in the first place and despite a massive weight was gradually pivoting round from the impact if they banged the door shut- was a nightmare of a job as I was on my own and had to work in a really tight corner to move what was a 1500 kilo safe. On moving it back from the wall I found a one and a half carat diamond solitaire ring wedged down the side. Price on it then was something like one and a half or two thousand quid- when I called the staff I was expecting a look of relief and euphoria on their faces but it went pretty much the opposite. They called out the manager who's face quickly turned to a look best described as medieval torture, as it turned out they'd tried to fire an employee over it but since they couldn't prove anything they'd somehow fiddled the accounts instead! Didn't even get a pat on the back or a thanks for that one...

  4. #14
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Carlisle, England.
    Posts
    272
    Country: England

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    Quote Originally Posted by Parautoptic View Post
    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.

  5. #15
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    Edinburgh
    Posts
    259
    Country: UK

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    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.

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