Safe And Sound – Stockinger Bespoke Safes
You’ve spent your life amassing a collection of watches, jewelry, rare coins and other valuables. The very best that money can buy! Sadly, the possessions you collect over the course of a lifetime can all too easily fall victim to a crime of opportunity. Enter Stockinger – Bespoke Safes; designed to eliminate the opportunity for theft!
How many of you out there have multiple watches? Based on the conversations we have off-line with some of y’all, my idea is that the readers of Monochrome have multiple watches. Typically those watches are rare and/or pricey. What happens to our watches and other valuable possessions when we are not at home? Do you leave them out on display in a cabinet or on top of your dresser? Do you employ the age-old tactic of hiding them inside the dresser – behind the socks and underwear? Bad news: a thief will not be too distracted by the ‘drawers’ in your drawers and go STRAIGHT to your watches and jewelry and cash.
The German company, Stockinger produces vaults for personal use. If your first impression is the same as mine you are now thinking “booooooring” and everything is starting to go grey. Not warranted in this case. Stockinger produces ultra high-quality safes and vaults that are designed and built with the same type of ethic as the jewelry and watches we intend to put inside them. These are safes intended for the Monochrome crowd; “Dedicated to fine watches.” Stockinger safes are suede and leather lined and can be fitted with watch winders. The Beluwo winders can be programmed and monitored remotely. So while your ‘safe-queen’s are sitting safe and sound, they are also still being wound.
Stockinger are quite literally the Bentley of the safe/vault industry! They really are; Bentley choose Stockinger to build the safes they market to their client base. All of the same styling cues you’d expect to find in a Bentley motorcar can be had in your personal safe. Quilted leather linings? (Check!) Deep, lustrous paint finish? (Check!) Exotic hardwood veneers? (Check!) When you close the door, does it sound like a bank vault? (Check!) If your right foot and your right brain happen to find the Bentley’s performance and ethos too ‘ho-hum’, Stockinger also produces safes in conjunction with Brabus and Bugatti!
With the same ethic as a team of old-world coachbuilders Stockinger carefully craft all of their safes, bespoke or ‘off-the-peg’ to the absolute highest degrees of fit and finish. The outside surfaces of the safe can be treated with any type of architectural effect you desire – wood paneling – veneers of marble or granite – anything you need or want to fit the décor of the room where the safe will reside. The ‘standard’ finish of their readymade safes is an 18 step lacquering process that is applied to give the final product an almost ‘glowing’ effect.
Let’s dispense with all of the ‘bank heist’ movie clichés: a Stockinger safe can’t be cut or drilled into! The walls of the core are thick steel, with a layer of polymers and rocks. The polymer keeps the rocks in place. The rocks dull drill bits and saw blades within minutes. They also dissipate heat, reducing the effective temperature of a cutting torch. If you try to FORCE the door open, a glass plate inside the door shatters, causing the impressive bars of each vault to move into place – permanently. (Wasn’t that the problem they had with the safe in the remake of “The Italian Job”?) Unlike a lot of ‘safes’ that you can pick-up at your local office supply store – you can’t ‘pick-up’ a Stockinger safe! The smallest size they produce for personal use (the Hotel Cube) is 125 KG or 275 Lbs, while weight of other models is always well over 400 kilograms. The size and weight alone should act as a deterrent to any wise thief! The Company proudly boasts that in over a quarter of a century no Stockinger safe has ever been opened by force!
You can’t have all that brawn and no brain! Stockinger builds all of their safes and vaults with sophisticated electronics that allow your vault to become an integrated part of your home security system. The retractable ‘Stocktronic’ keypad of your safe can be programmed with codes that activate silent alarms and panic messages directly to your local gendarmerie.
The craftsmen and engineers at Stockinger have created an environment befitting the valuables that their customers trust them to house. While they offer a pretty wide array of sizes, shapes, internal configuration and colors they are still all too happy to entertain bespoke creations. If your house is going to be featured in Architectural Digest there’s no reason to Photoshop your safe out of the frame, or hide it under a throw rug. If you can think it up (and pay for it) Stockinger will build and install it!
For more information, please visit the Stockinger website.
3 responses
Mario, earlier in the week I made a comment on the watch industry becoming morbid and glutinous. Clearly the proportion of the intrinsic value in high-end watches is shifting more and more towards purely the perception of “luxury”. Those of us who understand the value in horology thought, and are not as concerned about the “luxury” status, still manage to find and justify that horological value in the various time-pieces we purchase.
THIS however, is just ridiculous! Paying in excess of $100k for a safe for your watches, justifiable solely by the fact that the owner may have spent ten fold on the watches inside – this I think separates the suckers from the rest.
Q. How can you tell if a person is a horological aficionado, or likely and an unknowledgeable sucker who paid big bucks for his watches just so that the people around him know how rich and “LUXURIOUS” he is?
A. If he has a $150k “luxury” safe, he is probable the latter!
Just my $0.02
Nik
Nik,
This website doesn’t really work unless we get people’s opinions – all are valued.
As for the matter at hand: I really don’t like to base dialectics around money. It’s totally relative to the reader. I guess the real point is that you need to protect the things you have if you value them. Can I tell someone NOT to put their collection of G-Shock watches in a safe? (No.) Can I implore a person with a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar Chronograph to put the watch in a safe? (I really ‘shouldn’t’ But I will anyway!)
Fact: Money isn’t easy to come by no matter where you live.
Fact: There are people who steal.
We can’t let them win. Stockinger safes are fancy. But the specifications are as serious as a heart attack. Here’s a video I watched.
http://vimeo.com/68605390
I will admit – my German is a bit rusty… but somewheres around the 6:30 mark they ask the question if a safe can be worth 48,000 EUR? Then proceed to show how difficult it is to cut into the substrate materials that line the core of each safe… at one point they try drilling through it only to produce a totally mangled drill bit.
Mario
P.S.
I do sincerely appreciate ALL of the comments I get. However I really appreciate those from folks like yourself who read the words and don’t just look at the pictures! (Or complain because I have a bit of fun with a malapropism every now and again!)
Mario,
I do hope you take no offence. When I believe something, I don’t feel the need to hold back, this is the Internets after all!
Watching the video, I do see how it can be regarded as a very high end safe. I just personally have a hate with a passion for all things “luxury”, when all of their credibility rests on that one attribute.
Perhaps I just don’t like the way the company presents this product, which IMHO has potential to be a lot less gimmicky.
Nik
PS I would personally get a real nice vintage safe (perhaps pay to get it restored)