Home is where the heart is and, for most of us, our watch collections. Some of us have them neatly arranged in their boxes, complete with papers as orderly as any archive; others of us are, shall we say, a little more free-spirited on the organisational front. But we all have them somewhere safe – at least, relatively safe.
But that word, safe, has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people. Are you keeping your watches somewhere actually secure or just somewhere you can keep track of them? I’ll let you think about that for a second because deep down you probably already know that if someone came into your house, it wouldn’t be too difficult for them to leave with your watch collection.
Honestly, it’s not just watches. There’s probably a lot in life you want to keep safe and secure, but as we’re a watch magazine we don’t need to speculate. We know the kind of timepieces you’re likely to have. You have great taste, after all.
Types of Safes
Before you get to selecting the right safe, you’ll need to understand your options. We won’t get into size here, but there are a number of styles available depending on the kind of look, placement and secrecy you’re after.
Freestanding Safes
This is the classic, corner of the room, completely visible safe. A safe doesn’t need to be hidden if it’s secure in its own right – just out of easy eyeline from outside – and is by far the simplest type of safe to install. Made from steel and a mix of concrete and armouring, they can range from light to immovably heavy. They can also be a bit of an eyesore, though there are some rather handsome options out there too. This is where you’ll be choosing your safe for aesthetics as much as security.
Wall Safes
The classic safe-behind-the-painting technique, with or without the tastefully artistic camouflage. They’re normally on the smaller side, and as they can be set directly into the wall, are often most suitable for smaller spaces – apartments, offices, anywhere a freestanding safe would be too domineering. As alluded too, the biggest benefit of wall safes is that they can be hidden, even in the back of a wardrobe, offering an additional layer of security. This will likely mean extra work installing them, but they do offer just as much variety (if on a smaller scale) as freestanding.
Floor Safes
Take all the benefits and downsides to wall safes and amp them up. Floor safes are necessarily hard to install, requiring chunks of floor to be removed completely. That means they can also only be installed in solid, concrete floors, not the floorboards of a second-floor home office. Unless you’re considering this while building a new house, it also means the installation will cost a lot more than other types of safe. The benefit however is that these are arguably the most hidden and secure types of safe around. It’s unlikely anyone but you will be able to find it, no matter how much they searched, and the structural security of being surrounded by concrete can’t be overstated.
Luxury Safes
Sometimes you don’t just want a practical necessity; you want to have some fun with it, too. Luxury safes have all the characteristics of other safes, depending on how you want to install them, but the reason they’re different is that they’re built to be seen and used, not just locked and forgotten. These are the sorts of safes that are covered in exotic woods, with chrome hardware, leather-clad interiors, and are generally bespoke to your needs. That includes sections for jewellery, winders for watches, even humidors for cigars if you’re worried your son might be getting a taste.
They’re expensive, of course, as they offer the same level of security as other safes but with more bells and whistles. So, if you’re just getting a safe for insurance purposes (which we’ll get onto), you may want something simpler just to tick a box. But if you want to use your safe on a daily basis and not only have it suit the rest of your home, but make it a statement piece in its own right, the luxury options are quite literally endless.
Getting Your Watches Insured
Should the worst happen to your watches, you’ll want to make sure you can recoup the loss. Even if they’re unique or sentimental, getting reimbursed at least takes a bit of the sting out of it.
As the experts at safe specialist, Johnson’s of Lichfield suggest, “all individual special, rare/sentimental items should be ideally photographed and professionally valued, and this information should be saved (email copies to yourself and share with your insurer). This proves ownership. Insurance underwriters normally require any high-value item to be either on ‘your person’ or locked away secured in an appropriate insurance-approved graded safe.”
That last point is incredibly important. It might surprise you to know however that not all safes are built equal and not all are certified by the AiS (Association of Insurance Surveyors) and/or ECB-S (European Certification Board – Security). If your safe doesn’t have either of these certifications, your insurer might not cover your watches. You can find lists of approved safes through both organisations, so make sure the one you are considering is on there.
It’s also worth noting that different safes are rated to different cash values and your insurance will require you to have one that at least matches what you put in it. What they perhaps don’t make clear is that valuables- in this case, watches – are rated differently from cash.
“For non-cash rating,” explain Johnson’s of Lichfield, “you would multiply the cash element x10 to give you the valuable rating. For example, a Grade 0 Safe covers clients for a cash rating of £6,000/£60,000 (£6k x10) valuable rating. This is a total, meaning that if you held £2,000 cash in the same safe, this would mean you could still hold £40,000 valuables.”
Honestly, if that sounds like a lot to work out, then you’d best talk directly to your insurer – and that’s what we’d suggest anyway. I don’t want anyone getting stung from our advice. But it is a helpful rule of thumb around what you might be expected to keep, security-wise.
To Wind or Not to Wind?
Obviously, a safe can be a big metal box you put things in. But it likely comes as no surprise that there are plenty of options out there catering to watch collectors specifically, usually by including batteries or winders. The question that crops up a lot is simple: is there any point to winders?
This is something there’s no definitive answer about. Watches, like classic cars, were traditionally made to last forever with regular servicing, and they were meant to actually work for that whole time. The thinking therefore is that keeping your watch wound, keeping the lubricants moving so they don’t solidify and essentially keeping the whole thing ‘warmed up’ is what watches are built for.
On the other hand, wear and tear is a simple fact of life. Gears can lose wheels; springs can become misshapen and age can set into a watch’s bones. Both are fortunately problems that can also be solved with regular servicing, so really there’s one main reason to opt for a winder: complications.
As veteran watch writer Ken Kessler puts it, “watch winders will always be a divisive topic, half of the watch community thinking they are absolutely necessary, the other half thinking they’re totally unnecessary. But there is no denying that they are essential if you have a large number high complications with perpetual calendars among them, which would need constant resetting if they were allowed to unwind. This I especially true if you keep watches in a safe, which deserve to be equipped with winders.” A bunch of rare automatics? Probably not. A handful of perpetual calendars though and those winders become less of a debate, more of a necessity.
Structural Integrity
Safes are big, heavy and take up some space. While they don’t necessarily need to be hidden for insurance purposes (though they may need to be out of line of sight from a window), they still take some careful placement – placement which may be dictated as much by the structure of your home as where’s convenient.
“Safes should really be installed by a base fixed to a concrete floor,” say Johnson’s of Lichfield. “But often clients don’t have that, whether it’s because of underfloor heating or they’re not on the ground floor. In these instances, we prefer to fix the back to an external, preferably thick brick wall. Either way, the safe should be attached to the very fabric of the building.”
Before installation, you’ll need to have some serious survey work done to make sure that not only is there somewhere for your safe, er, safely secured, but that its weight won’t damage your home. That includes being able to take it up the stairs. It might be easier to have it somewhere fit for purpose – a basement, perhaps – than where’s most convenient, like your first-floor office. This balance more than anything else may limit the actual size of safe you go for.
Future Proofing
You might know precisely what size and grade of safe you need to cover your watch collection and valuables right now, and that’s great. But nobody’s watch collection remains static.
“Where insurance companies insist on a safe because of an individual item,” explain Johnson’s of Lichfield, “we would always recommend the client looks at future-proofing their safe purchase as watches and valuables increase in value overtime and often collectors buy more items. This means if they purchase a graded safe of a level to cover the one item, then they will be required again by their insurance company for an additional safe. Therefore, it is best to assess their entire collection and consider any future purchases.”
Basically, installing a proper safe is as disruptive as it is necessary, so do yourself a favour and make sure you get it right the first time. You don’t want to lose cover for your Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar because you didn’t plan ahead.
More details at Johnson’s of Lichfield.
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