blog

The decline of the bank safe deposit box – and the rise of a new breed Even as banks phase out their safety deposit boxes, the industry itself is soaring – led by leaner, more innovative, more technologically advanced secure storage companies like Knox. The bank safe deposit box has been a mainstay of heist movies for decades. From Heat to Ocean’s Eleven to the Inside Man to The Thomas Crown Affair, super-suave, ingenious bank robbers risk their lives and stake their careers on bypassing seemingly impossible security barriers to access the untold riches therein. Largely as a result of these films, bank safe deposit boxes have come to be associated with glamour and wealth and sophistication, and with top-notch

Storing gold at home may be easier and cheaper – however, hiding your precious krugerrands at the back of your sock drawer or even in a “secure” home safe could well turn out to be the wrong decision. Gold has been running with the bulls of late. Shrugging off the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and even the inflation crisis, it has emerged as one of the safest bets around. It’s often said that there’s never a bad time to own gold. That’s as true as it’s ever been. The question is though, now that you’ve bought it where do you store it? It’s no secret that securing a safe storage space is one of the most important aspects of

In the wake of a cataclysmic crypto crash and continued market instability, bullion’s never shone brighter.  SBF. They’re the letters on everyone’s lips right now. Well, those and FTX and FTT. Calamity, it seems, comes in threes. Sam Bankman-Fried, popularly known as SBF, the former white knight of crypto who literally overnight morphed into Darth Vader, last week threw a massive curveball at an industry many previously considered impregnable. A stellar piece of investigative journalism  by the publication CoinDesk revealed SBF’s crypto exchange empire FTX was built on sand. And when the golden boy who only this year had been bailing out fellow crypto firms went in search of his own saviour, he was instead left to twist by his

Even as a demented arsonist has been brought to book, housefires remain on the rise. Fortunately, storing valuables and irreplaceables in a safe deposit box offers an added layer of protection for peace of mind. Perhaps you’ve heard? A maniac has been on the loose on the leafy streets of Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. A serial arsonist, an old-school exhibitionist, a flame-throwing house breaker with a nihilist streak. Over a period of two years, this mysterious individual started 16 separate fires in suburbs spanning Hyde Park, Rosebank, Benmore and Craighall Park, all of them in upmarket houses. His MO was to put it mildly, peculiar. And frightening. He monitored his intended victims like a jungle predator surveying its prey. When the

In an unstable economic environment, in an era of digitisation, and amidst increasing concerns about issues such as crime, cyber felony, natural disasters and loadshedding, the safety deposit box is making an extraordinary comeback. In recent years, safety deposit boxes have surged in popularity – to the point where, today, they are seen as essential and heavily wait-listed. In Europe, North America, Asia and here in South Africa – where high-tech operators such as Knox have been leading the charge – the humble safety deposit box has received a dramatic upgrade, and is now the secure storage solution of choice for everyone from wealthy collectors to crypto investors to regular folk people simply looking to keep their valuables and family

If you have a safety deposit box, here’s a breakdown of what to store. And if you don’t have a safety deposit box, here are some of the items that might make you reconsider. A safe deposit box offers maximum protection and maximum security. Strong, and largely fireproof and theft-proof (unauthorised entry into the vault is almost impossible), they are the safest place to store the items you simply cannot afford to go missing. If it’s valuable or irreplaceable, and you won’t need it in an emergency, high-end safe deposit boxes (such as that provided by Knox) are simply the most secure and dependable storage solution. More specifically, we highly recommend storing the following items in a safety deposit box: