I set out for Philadelphia this August with a very specific mission to find a Proof Morgan Dollar to add to my collection. My thinking was since it would be a large east coast show that this would be the best time and place to go looking. I thought it would be a piece of cake to find a lot of examples and narrow them down to a few nice specimens in my price range and pick. As it would turn out the easy part was narrowing them down not finding them. When I could find them they where either too toned & rough for my taste or too high a grade & price. As luck would have it though my regular dealer had brought a beautiful 1904 PR-64 that is just amazing. It does have a slight golden brown tone but nothing that distracts from its surface and I couldn’t be more happy to add it to my collection even though I did end up spending a little more than I had planned. I would have loved to have seen some more coins that matched my price range and taste but all an all it was a wonderful hunt. I was also able to add a beautiful 1881-O MS-64 to my set so it is shaping up nicely.

So as most of you have probably noticed last weeks Numismatic Tools Of The Trade is a little late. As the saying goes though better late than never. Without further ado here we go. This weeks subject is my Superior Master-25 Gun Safe or in my case coin safe. I spent a lot of time researching gun safes and that research led me to the champion and superior safe company (they are both the same company just diffenet product lines). If you have been in a sporting goods, hardware, or big box store recently you probably have seen a gun safe or at least a little home safe. After my research I found that just because they have a big name behind them, have nice plush interiors, or look very secure they aren’t necessarily the best choice. lets start with the small home safes first and foremost if you don’t bolt them down the thief will just carry them off with no real effort. The second issue is that the steel on them is usually so thin that I have seen people cut them open with a standard circular saw. With those kinds of draw backs and the fact that my collection is always growing I quickly moved on to looking at gun safes. Here is where things get tricky. So you are at your local sporting goods store and you see the gun safes. You think well today is the day that I pick one out. You take a good look at them all and with security on your mind you probably gravitate to the one with thickest door and while your brain is on the right track you have just been tricked. These company’s use the trick words composite door a lot. The company’s that make these trickery safes know that security is important for this product but people will always be enticed by a low price so they meet our brains halfway. They keep the metal content down to lower price while giving the illusion that there is more there then their really is. That is what a composite door is, it may look like it is 1” or maybe even 2” thick but in reality it is only a thin piece of sheet metal wrapped around some fire resistant sheet rock. The Problem with this illusion is that when a criminal starts to pry on a composite door that sheet metal will give with just a little bit of effort. This is one of the main reasons I went with the Superior safe master series because the door starts with a 3/8” steel plate. Then they add two sheets of fire resistant sheet rock and a 12 GA. Steel sheet to finish if off. The whole door edge is also increased in material and construction to help prevent pry attacks compared to the competition. The body at 10 GA. Steel is also above the average most box store gun safes. So remember always compare and do your research before making such a big investment. Also remember that if you have one of these composite door safes it is not the end of the world you just need to take extra steps to preventing the worst case scenario.

I will start this blog out by asking a general question. If I reply to your comments do you get a notification of my replies?

Last weeks blog didn't get any questions to answer so I decided to reply to the comments.

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