A question for the community about Long Term effects of keeping watches in (cold and dry) Safe Deposit Boxes
Hello! Recently during a lunch with a few watch collectors, it was mentioned that perhaps the room environment of Safe Deposit Boxes are too cold and too dry for watches which will result in the lubricant of watches to become sticky or to dry up. This mig...
Keep watches in sealed bags and change the bags often.
Use and replace desiccant bags often. I use ziplock bags for the last 10 years, never any issue.
Much appreciated Ted!
May I ask how frequent is often? And do you wind them when you change the bags? Many thanks
Like once a month, I try to wind them slowly.
I really don’t care about winding my manual winds, I have given up on accuracy on them. I just wear manual winds usually without winding them, Andy Warhol style. Always worst case you get it serviced....
I don't use a safety deposit box, but isn't the lubricants dryin up kind of an old wives tale from years ago when they used a far different lubricant than today???
But I also wind my watches once a month....just because.
haha! Good point about the old wive tales!
I am not sure either way, hence I started this thread... Thanks for commenting and best regards
Ah! this is a photo shamelessly borrowed from google images :)
Agree, a photo of pretty nicely set up room.. Thanks!
Depends on the make
Maybe it depends which brands of watches stored cold and dry. Not in a bank vault, i stored my Longines cold and dry. But ones a month i wind and wear my Longines. The rest of my collection i wear on regular base.
This is going to sound stupid but....
Has anyone considered vacuum packing their watches for long term storage? That would eliminate the moisture issue I assume.
I think SDB is the safest storage
cold and dry isn t a an issue for mechanical instruments , hot and humid rather. I keep my non WR watches is a ziplock bag just in case of a pipe burst in the bank(it could happen).Sometimes I wind up my watches but i think with these modern synthetic oil...
Excellent advice and practice, my friend!
I should use a ziplock bag just in case too, as you and Ted have done I appreciate the comment about modern synthetic oils. Many thanks!
Don't mean to scare the bejesus out of anyone with a SDB, but...
This article is worth a read. www.nytimes.com
This is a great post, it's true banks basically waive all responsibility for what in the boxes.
SDB or not, real lesson here is insurance.
An important article! I bought a TL-15 safe (and live in a safe area and have a home security system)
Nothing is perfect, but no one is getting that out easily and armed home invasion is extremely unlikely.
Thanks, I forget who, but one of our members here wrote a helpful article about this topic.
The safe was just installed and I'm quite pleased.
Haven’t had a problem
Although I don’t think the deposit room at my bank is cold. Not sure about dry. I have the watches in a Pelicancase inside the deposit box. Best Andreas
I try to wind them every 4 to 6 weeks and avoid temp extremes (hot or cold). My guess is that hot may be worse than cold. I used to keep some dessicant with them but recently wondered
if that might be of no benefit or even counter productive... then thought... how many watches do I have that aren't sealed well enough for that not to matter? I do however think occasional widning is good and that constant running (winders) is not. Their ...
Many thanks for sharing your practive
And I have the same opinion about watch winders.... Best regards
Watch storage
There are no safe deposit boxes where I live and in any case none of my watches are not valuable enough to justify the inconvenience, especially as I like to wear them all on a whim. I have been researching a home safe, although a determined thief would l...
A brands response
It would be interesting to find out what the actual brands said about such a storage scenario. Surely they’d have an answer depending on the climatic conditions of where those watches were being stored?