# Bank runs and safety deposit boxes.



## illinoisguy (Sep 4, 2011)

I don't know if anyone knows the answer to this but in the event of a bank run, and they call a bank holiday and were close it down for extended period of time, will you still have access to your safety deposit box? Any experience with that?

Thanks


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## ldc (Oct 11, 2006)

When the banks closed in Spain a few years ago, no one was allowed access to their boxes, and the contents were forfeited. I believe it was the same in Argentina, according to ferfal's blog in the early 2000's.


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## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

The reason the cost of a bank box is deductible on your federal income tax is so they have a list of who has them.


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## Roadking (Oct 8, 2009)

An in home safe is a better choice.


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

If the banks close, you will not have access to anything inside the bank building.

Get yourself a high rated fireproof home safe or security box and keep copies of everything needed in that. You can still keep the bank box, its always a good idea to have things off site also.


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## WolfWalksSoftly (Aug 13, 2004)

It would be wise not to have a safe deposit box. It would also not be wise to keep more than enough money to pay for one months worth of bills. 
Deposits are guaranteed by the FDIC, but they are only required to have 10% on hand to cover any losses. Besides, do you actually have faith and trust in the Government.?


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## ldc (Oct 11, 2006)

I got a bank box as there had already been a (foiled) break-in at my apt., as well as a fire in the apt below mine. One must weigh the pros and cons of their situation. Where I'm currently living there is no "yard" to bury things in, as I have done in the past, which got me through 2 hurricanes when banks and ATM's were down for weeks into 2 months, and cash was king...At some level we all play the odds.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

During the Great Depression, I heard that some people lost the contents of their safety deposit boxes. I have no data on that other than I heard some people lost what they had put in it.


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## BlackFeather (Jun 17, 2014)

Some jewelry stores and some hotels have safe deposit boxes. They are less likely to close and less likely to confiscate your possessions in an economic crisis. Banks are very likely to do both.


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## DryHeat (Nov 11, 2010)

Included in the present Wikipedia essay on the subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 discussion of the "hoax of safe deposit box seizures": 


> The first known reference to this hoax was in the book _After the Crash - Life In the New Great Depression_.[25] That text refers only to gold, not to silver, which was added by 1998 to Internet references. It claims to be an Executive Order, yet whoever wrote the text wrote it to apply to specific individuals (e.g. "Your possession"), so if the text did originate from the government, it would have been sent to individuals, not published as an Executive Order. The first paragraph starts with the actual text of Executive Order 6102, then edits it slightly (e.g. changing "said national emergency" to "a national emergency" and "still continues to exist" to "still exists"), and then adds apparently made-up text. Due to the minor edits and how the real text and fake text are combined mid-sentence, it is almost certainly an intentionally designed hoax rather than an accident.
> Most of this text does not appear in the actual Executive Order.[26] In fact, safe deposit boxes held by individuals were not forcibly searched or seized under the order and the few prosecutions that occurred in the 1930s for gold "hoarding" were executed under different statutes. One of the few such cases occurred in 1936, when a safe deposit box containing over 10,000 troy ounces (310 kg) of gold belonging to Zelik Josefowitz, who was not a U.S. citizen, was seized with a search warrant as part of a tax evasion prosecution.[27]
> The U.S. Treasury came into possession of a large number of safe deposit boxes due to bank failures. During the 1930s, over 3,000 banks failed and the contents of their safe deposit boxes were remanded to the custody of the Treasury. If no one claimed the box, it remained in the possession of the Treasury. In October 1981, there were 1,605 cardboard cartons in the basement of the Treasury, each carton containing the contents of one unclaimed safe deposit box.[28]


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