Storing metals at home?

I would only use a safe as a decoy.  If it's so big you need help installing it then it's not secret.  If it's small enough you can bring it home yourself, it isn't good enough.  And a gun pointed at you will open the best of them.  Those are the things that roll around in my head.

Best to store just enough in one to satisfy the nefarious in a worst case scenario...

and get creative with negative space for the bulk.

Whatever safe you get, be sure to anchor it to keep it from being wheeled off in a burglary.  Even better, get two safes.  Put one in a corner and anchor it to the floor (para-wedge anchors in a concrete slab are sturdy) and both walls of the corner.  Put the second safe next to the first and anchor it.  Then bolt the two safes together.  Your most valuable possessions go in the corner safe.  The only available avenues of attack are the 'door side' (the sturdiest) and from above (the least convenient).

Even a 600 lb. safe can be dollied out of a house pretty easily if not anchored down.

Sentry safes?  Yep!  With a drill and a jig saw I had one (of my own) emptied in less than five minutes.

I use a small cheap key safe you can buy at any home depot or wal-mart and hide it really well.

A big guard dog and a safe, thats been my recipe.....you could kill the dog, and steal the safe i guess. But its probably easier to hit the next house, right? Also, on the safe topic, its good to have to store birth certificates, stock certificates, blah blah blah....i keep a hard drive with all the family pics on it in there as well, in case of fire. its never a bad idea to have a good safe. one fools opinion. 

agreed

Beyond bank safe deposit boxes, has anyone considered putting a safe in self storage?

Good idea or worried that your unit is busted open on the next episode of "Storage Wars"?

What about hiding it up in your attic insulation?  I am also in this same situation, a safe is obvious there is something valuable in there, even if its a paper with your SS# on it (identity theft).  I believe in a fire safe for papers, pictures, and whatever other digital media you may have, but for valuables i'm not convinced a safe is safe.

You can pick up good safes on Craig's List.  But forget the old ones.  they are too easy to open.

I would not use a safe. 

Much safer to hide in the house.  You need to get creative.  keep talking to people.  Since it is metal a metal detector can find it.  A good way to avoid that problem is to put the coins into a metal pipe.  a metal detector can not tell there is metal inside a metal container.  Now make the pipe look natural in the house or buried outdoors. 

If you have X ingots of Silver then store them in X/2 different places - and not all in one building.  Use multiple locations and be exactly as cute and ingenious as you like when hiding your precious metal. 

Sew single coins into garments. Hide ingots in hollowed out books. Bury coins in sections of capped off PVC pipe. Find or create crevices in your home and exploit them.  Find cans of the right size, empty them, wash them out and reseal them with your silver inside. Stick some silver under your enormous freezer.

Tell exactly one (1)  adult whom you trust with your life where your silver is.  This should be someone who lives over 100 miles away - not someone who could be swept up in a home invasion.

If you can possibly manage it (and this is a tall order I admit) tell no-one else that you even own silver.

Have some 'throwdown' silver, including a few coins, in the obvious 'safe' to act as a sop to thieves. Perhaps in the safe, in a shoebox marked '"Stimulus Package!" or something like that to help convince casual thieves that this is your one true hoard that you a) dote on and b) spend hours rubbing on your naked body.

Finally: do not rely on just hiding your PMs.  Use layered security. Do all this and also be prepared to defend your silver as you would defend your life and liberty. Because when the dollar collapses,  that is what your silver will be worth.

Hope this was helpful.

PVC can leave a greenish milky goo on silver, devaluing your stash significantly if it spends too much time in direct contact with it.

http://coins.about.com/od/caringforcoins/f/pvc_damage_faq.htm

Personally, I'm not one of those whose overly paranoid of banks seizing the contents of safe deposit boxes, though I understand why people would be paranoid of doing that, and they certainly do a good job of keeping your stash secure and off site.

If I had to keep my stash at home, I would wrap it in several layers of protection (plastic wrap & wax paper) then put it in a PVC tube making sure none of the silver was in contact with the PVC, then I'd glue two caps on the ends and seal those with wax, then I'd dig a hole twice as deep in my backyard as I would normally need, I'd bury the pipe at the bottom, then about a foot above that, I'd put some junky metal, maybe an old toy or a couple of aluminum cans, so that if anybody used a metal detector looking for the stash, they'd serve as a decoy.

Oh, I'd also leave about one or two tubes out in a shoe box in the closet so any thieves looking around would assume they found the whole kit 'n' kaboodle.