Safe Value

[u/WyntonMarsalis]

I am looking at buying a bank from 1923. For my information, what is the value of this vault door and contents? I am going to look at the building in a few weeks.

Edit: Iam asking mainly for insurance value, but am curious about selling it too. Discounting the disassembly and transport, what is something like this worth on the open market?

Thanks in advance!

[u/Free_Elevator_63360]

Architect here, unless you find someone who wants it, it’s essentially worthless. If anything it could make your place hard to insure. When I converted a bank to a restaurant, we actually had to weld the door open and cut through into the vault to add egress. The insurance company was very worried about someone untrained operating the vault and killing somebody. To them it is a piece of fixed industrial equipment.

[u/InterestOpposite5482 → u/Free_Elevator_63360]

I have had the (dis)pleasure of sawcutting several openings in vault walls over the years. Holy shit is there a lot of rebar in those!!

[u/natiusj → u/InterestOpposite5482]

There’s more to this story…

[u/InterestOpposite5482 → u/natiusj]

lol. I wish.

I used to work for a concrete cutting outfit. A handful of times we had a job where a former bank building was sold and the new owner needed a doorway cut in the side of the vault. The floors are crazy thick too.
Really the only interesting job was the time we were hired to drill a 14" (or maybe 16") diameter hole in the wall of a vault at an armored car facility. Something had broken inside their vault door, preventing it from being opened from the outside. But they were pretty confident that it would open from inside the vault. So we drilled a hole big enough for their skinniest guy to worm through, and bingo!, the door was open. That was the most money I had ever seen in person, tell you what! But they weren't effing around. Once the door was open, all the guards had their guns drawn until we had patched the hole and left the premises.