Ahhh.....flashback.....the container didn't actually break as far as I could work out. It was in a plastic container with a rubber sealed, clip on lid. I also siliconed the lid on and then taped the whole box with packing tape. The silver was in zip sealed plastic bags, I had a spacer in the bottom of the container so a fair bit of water would have to get in before the silver was sitting in water and the bottom of the container was filled with silicon crystals. The coins were in mint rolls and capsules. None of my precautions worked and the whole lot ended up full of water. I remember filling the container up with water afterwards and couldn't get it to leak out for love nor money. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the pressure of dirt on the middle of the lid caused it to bow and leak at the ends. I had another container the same next to it that was bone dry inside. C
Yeah, rookie mistake. Next time, don't forget the Paper mch and more rubber gloves. An interperative dance over the burial location on alternating Sunday's and Wednesdays following a new moon also help stop any water ingress but not guarantee it. Particularly if your stash points north. Another solution is to keep them in your sock drawer. It's quite rare mine get flooded in there.
I would suggest that vacuum sealing the silver into bags and them putting them into a small Pelican case would be better protection than a metal safe.
Well, a metal safe will be easier to find with a metal detector and does it offer any further security to burying the silver. If someone pings your safe and digs it up they aren't just going to put it back because it is in a safe. Plus safes are bulky and require more digging. How about some plastic drain pipe instead of the safe? You bury it so only a small area is detectable, i.e. straight up and down rather than lenghtways. You can get some nice end-caps and plastic cement to seal them, you can probably get screw fittings as well to make it easier to add items and check that someone hasn't found it, emptied it and put the tube back. Use a post hole digger so you don't disturb too much of the ground and keep going until you get down below the frost line (Google it), If you can't get down that far just make the whole larger than you need, put the pipe down and fill the gap with packing beads. Will make a hell of a mess when you dig it up but that will blow away. This way as the ground shifts as it freezes and does what ground does you get a bit of flexibility. You also don't have to fight against suction when you try to extract the tube. Bury the tube top well below the surface, add a nice flat stone on top and add a generous amount of dirt and chuck on a couple of bottle caps just below the surface. That way any decent metal detector which would find your stash will find the decoy and hopefully they won't dig deeper, especially when they come up against a burried rock of unknown size. Then work backwards away from stash burying bottle caps and old bolts or anything else that will annoy the casual metal detectorist. Follow the procedures mentioned by the other posters to prtect the contents and head down to ALDIs this week for their vacuum sealer for about $99. This is designed for sealing food before it is put into the freezer and I have used it for protecting valuables in the past. As long as the bags you use aren't PVC with softener you should be OK. Glad Wrap bags are good for storing metals in too. Having said all that I wouldn't bother as it will take a while to dig and if anyone observes you then they can check it out for themselves later. You will never know that your stash is safe unless you dig it up and if it is empty you won't know when it disapeared. Added to that, all the hoardes found across England indicate that you don't always get to reclaim them as planned. Disclaimer: I have never buried anything in this manner, all the info was taken from a book on how to bury things printed by an American company who seem to have trust issues.
This is excellent advice. I have done a similar concealment in my sock drawer. A couple of bolts and bottle caps amongst underwear and throughout the house deters most. Any time my wife finds bottle caps under the sofa, bed or in the bathroom I simply say "those are Decoys" I also know if anyone has been snooping in my drawers cos the beads fly everywhere through the bedroom. What sucks is that when I confront them about snooping they always ask "how come the beads don't fly out when you open it?" and I have to just respond "thats classified" otherwise they may get wind that I never open my sock drawer and I just recycle the same two pairs of jocks and socks through the week. And that is a can of worms SOOO not worth getting into.
A good tactic for drawer security I've used for years is a hair or two attached between drawers or a door with a minute bit of sellotape or other adhesive.... Done discreetly enough you can easily monitor dodgy people in your house - its saved me on more than a few occasions...
Well now drawers is a whole different ball game, you are on your own there. (Why would you even want to bury a drawer in the first place?!?)
my safe isnt metal, although i dont know what material it is. frost line is 4 feet where i live lol, thats a deep hole
