Or you could deposit your goods with the Royal Mint at its Welsh headquarters. Selfridges offers document-sized boxes, available from £180 a year, underneath its Oxford Street shop and you can add up to three extra people to a safe-deposit boxaccount. Do bear in mind that Harrods will vet every applicant for a safe-deposit boxwhich takes up to three working days. If you're looking for a well-known brand, you could lock up your loadat Harrods, which currently hasa few spaces left for small items in London.Īlthough you currently won't be able to store anything larger than a necklace or watch, prices start from £450 a year and include public liability insurance up to £10,000. One we looked at, called Sharps Pixley, offer safe-deposit boxes starting at £250 per year, with insurance liability cover up to £10,000 included. They are offered by many jewellers and bullion brokers, whichallow you to buy and sell gold and other precious metals.

If you're in London, there are plenty of options. Independent safe-deposit box firms have sprung up all over the country since banks began exiting the sector a decade ago. Lloyds Bank is considering bringing back safe-deposit boxesand toldWhich? Money that it was looking to test the boxes in branches in 2017. Those have boomed in recent decades, suggesting that we're still interested in keeping our stuff safe, but that our stuff has just gotten larger.If you're not based in the South East, however, there may soon be a chance to rent abox with a national banking giant. These private companies are analogous to self-storage locker businesses. But business is still good at smaller, community banks, and demand is still high for the biggest boxes.' He added that he's 'noticed a growth in private-vault companies that aren't affiliated with banks,' which might explain the perception that the safe-deposit box is a 'dodo bird,' as the New York Daily News wrote last year. 'They open new branches that don't offer safe-deposit box services. 'It's mostly bigger banks where I've seen the falloff,' Pluard said. It's Pluard's best guess, however, that the decline has leveled off and that reports of the demise of the safe-deposit box - 'On the way to oblivion,' said a Crain's New York Business headline last year 'A relic,' wrote The Boston Globe in March 'Obsolete,' added USA Today this month - are overblown.

He estimated that about half of the nation's safe-deposit boxes are sitting empty but noted that the lack of industry research and data on the subject makes all such assessments simply best guesses. 'They're just not in vogue anymore,' said Jerry Pluard, owner of Elgin-based Safe Deposit Box Insurance Coverage LLC.

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