Firearms insurance.

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Seadog

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Thats great to know, thank you! Fort Knox definitely isn't cheap either. I am worried more about fire than pro burglar level protection, but more steel is more heat sink as well.
Well that’s crazy that you bring up fire protection because their safes are also fire proof. If you go to their website they have a few pictures of safes that survived through tornadoes even when the house was gone and of one at a music store that had valuable violins in it and they survived survived unscathed
 

dennishoddy

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I have a Valuable Personal Property Rider with USAA for my firearms and related items and my late wife's jewelry. USAA is very reasonable and offers excellent customer service. I just need to drop the jewelry and move it to my safe deposit box at my bank and my premiums would go down substantially.
What's weird is that when we first got our policy from USAA, they told us that if we got a rider for jewelry, our premium would go down and it did.
Fast forward 10 years or so, wife took off her wedding ring in South Tx when pulling into a place to get a lunch so she could get on some hand lotion.
Put the ring into her lap, got a phone call from her mom, and I pulled in at the same time. We got out got for our lunch and went on down the road.
She noticed it missing shortly afterward.
We went back and it was gone.
USAA never questioned the claim, and she is in search of a new wedding ring.
I'm sure this one is going to exceed the claim amount......I see the gleam in her eye.
 

FullAuto

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There is a difference in having a rider for firearms on your home or renter's insurance and having an actual Personal Articles Policy for the gun(s) themselves. Riders aren't nearly as good of coverage and typically subject to the deductible of your home/renter's policy. Basically, unless you have a loss due to a full fire or tornado, they are nearly worthless. Get a specific policy for the guns.

Pricing obviously varies due to specific conditions and states, but when comparing, I found collectinsure.com aka Collectibles Insurance was cheaper as long as your collection was about $20k or less. The other major player is Historic Firearms aka Eastern Insurance. Any of the standard P&C carriers with a household name are severely overpriced. Most people don't realize how overpriced they are simply because their collections aren't large to even matter. Their premium per $thousand in coverage will be 5-8x higher than a company that specializes in guns.

Collectibles makes you itemize your guns if they have an individual value of $5k or higher. Historic/Eastern doesn't make you itemize until they are $10k individually. Historic/Eastern wants an appraisal at $50k individually. I don't remember the number at Collectibles, but it was lower. Historic has a minimum premium which covers I think $35k. But even if you don't have the $35k, it's still a cheaper policy than lower coverage elsewhere.

I pay around $700 annually for something like $250-275k in coverage. There is a 5% discount for being an NRA member. I believe at $250k there is an additional discount tier also.
 

Boehlertaught

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I have Farmers and simply set a stated amount of insurance for house contents to cover the loss. No issues at all. And i didn't have to disclose what the guns are.
 

Profreedomokie

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Here is the bad thing about bolting your safe to the floor...if a bad guy has a pry-bar and the safe don't move - more leverage for him, if the safe isn't bolted down he has to deal with finding a way to keep it stationary while he pry's - just something to think about, good for a nader, bad for a boogl'r
A friend that is a locksmith told me once that safes are usually stolen and opened later.
 

bambihunter

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I've got a big double door custom Bear safe. It weighs over 2 tons. It is bolted to the floor in numerous places. They are the Model T of safes. They are plain and ugly. The key system is a PITA, but does seem to be more effective than others. I think it is fairly secure and is minimum of 1/4" plate on all sides. However, the actual build quality kind of sucked. The doors aren't close to square, they warped by more than 1/4" on the panel. They wobble in the opening and if there was a fire, everything would be smoke damaged long before the seal would swell up to seal. They had to come out and do some grinding to make the door fit. It took them a bit first to respond, then longer to actually come out and do it. We had a very specific size we wanted to maximize the usable storage space and they accommodated that (which wasn't very different from what they offered, but just enough...)
Would I buy again from them? Maybe. Probably. I just wish their build quality was better. They said the metal warping was normal. With family members previously working in shipyards, we know that simply isn't true. There are ways to hold things square while they are welded up.
 

El Pablo

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I've got a big double door custom Bear safe. It weighs over 2 tons. It is bolted to the floor in numerous places. They are the Model T of safes. They are plain and ugly. The key system is a PITA, but does seem to be more effective than others. I think it is fairly secure and is minimum of 1/4" plate on all sides. However, the actual build quality kind of sucked. The doors aren't close to square, they warped by more than 1/4" on the panel. They wobble in the opening and if there was a fire, everything would be smoke damaged long before the seal would swell up to seal. They had to come out and do some grinding to make the door fit. It took them a bit first to respond, then longer to actually come out and do it. We had a very specific size we wanted to maximize the usable storage space and they accommodated that (which wasn't very different from what they offered, but just enough...)
Would I buy again from them? Maybe. Probably. I just wish their build quality was better. They said the metal warping was normal. With family members previously working in shipyards, we know that simply isn't true. There are ways to hold things square while they are welded up.

I got copies of my key made at Mayfair locks in okc, they are shorter so they are much easier to work with.

Build quality on mine is great. it is ugly as you mentioned.
 

bambihunter

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Finally found the pics of the Bear Safe I mentioned above.
Bottom inside corner
20200419_135144.jpg


Top inside corner. You can easily see how much further out the bottom of the picture above is than the picture below. It should be like below. It is recessed enough that it would be harder to pry though the door gaps are bigger than they should be too. The gap on above is big, plus it is much further out.
20200419_135157.jpg
 

El Pablo

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Finally found the pics of the Bear Safe I mentioned above.
Bottom inside corner
View attachment 208432

Top inside corner. You can easily see how much further out the bottom of the picture above is than the picture below. It should be like below. It is recessed enough that it would be harder to pry though the door gaps are bigger than they should be too. The gap on above is big, plus it is much further out.
View attachment 208433

Yuck, is this pre or post grinding?
 

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