“Antique floor safe” means two different things: a steel safe cast into a concrete floor, or a heavy old safe standing on one. Here’s how to tell which you have, who made them, who owns one in a house you’ve just bought, and what getting rid of it really involves.
Key takeaways
- An underfloor (in-floor) safe is a steel body set in concrete with its door flush with the floor. American sellers also use “floor safe” for any free-standing safe, which is what most “antique floor safe” listings are.
- The in-floor safes we could trace start in American patents of the 1920s, written for shops, stores, offices and service stations.
- A safe cast into the floor is almost certainly a fixture that went with the house. A free-standing one is a different question, and so are the contents.
- Underfloor safes are designed not to come out. Removal means opening it, breaking out concrete and making good the floor, so most are best left where they are.
- Insurance cash ratings belong to modern certified safes. An old underfloor safe has none until your insurer agrees one in writing.
In This Article
Floor safes at a glance
| In-floor (underfloor) safe | Free-standing “floor safe” | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Steel body cast into a concrete floor, door or lid at floor level | An ordinary safe standing on the floor, often on castors |
| Where you find it | Shops, offices, petrol stations and houses with concrete floors | Offices, shops, banks and houses |
| Earliest we traced | US patents filed in 19261,2 | Victorian and earlier |
| Makers named in records | In-A-Seal Safe Corporation (New York), Chubb’s Australian company, small patentees3,4 | Mosler, Diebold, Cary, Milner, Chubb, Tann and hundreds more |
| Who owns it after a house sale | Usually the buyer, as a fixture, unless the contract excludes it | Depends on the contract and on whether it was left as a chattel |
| Moving it | Rarely done; concrete must be broken out | A job for a specialist safe remover |
| Resale value | Very low once removed | From scrap value to thousands, by maker and condition |
What is an antique floor safe?
It depends who’s talking. In Britain, a floor safe usually means an underfloor safe: a steel box set into concrete below floor level, with a strong door on top that sits flush with the floor. Installers cut or cast a pocket in the slab, leave a margin of concrete around the body and pour around it in compacted layers.5 The concrete does much of the work. Once it has set, the safe is part of the building.
American sellers use the word more loosely. RM Sotheby’s sold a Cary safe of about 1900, 35 inches high and rolling on steel casters, as an “Antique circa 1900 Cary Safe Co. Buffalo, NY Floor Safe”.6 An Ohio dealer lists a late Victorian Diebold, 24 inches high, as a “small cast iron floor safe”.7 In that sense a floor safe is simply a safe that stands on the floor, as opposed to a wall safe, a desk safe or a strongbox.
So if you’re searching for an antique floor safe to buy, most of what you’ll see is free-standing. If you’ve found a round or square steel lid set into a concrete floor, you have the other kind. The drawing here shows one in section: the body tapers and has a wide base flange, so the concrete locks it in from below.2
Victorian safe makers weren’t keen on building safes into the structure at all. George Hayter Chubb advised in 1875 against setting a fire-resisting safe partly into a wall or recess: in a fire it would hang there taking the full heat, then fall further onto harder rubble than if it had dropped with the floor.8 A safe sunk in solid concrete at ground level is a different idea, and a later one.
Who made floor safes?
Floor safes rarely carry a big maker’s plate, and the trade catalogues we checked say little about them. Patents are the best paper trail. These are the ones we found for safes set into floors, in date order:
- 1926 Harry W. Hahn files a lock for floor safes set into the floor of a shop, store or office, with flanges top and bottom so the cement makes the safe “incapable of removal from the floor” (granted 1929).1
- 1926 Samuel L. Belknap files his double door floor safe for “chain stores, service stations, and the like” (granted 1932).2
- 1941 In-A-Seal Safe Corporation of New York patents a door lock for a safe “embedded in a concrete floor” with its rim flush with the floor (granted 1944).3
- 1947 Rex H. Campbell files a floor safe for flush installation in the floors or walls of business premises, assigned to two men from Oakland, California (granted 1954).9
- 1960 Chubb’s Australian company applies for a patent on an “improvement in floor safes”.4
- 1965 In Britain, J. C. Martin patents a floor or wall safe with a base flange and bolts to key it into the concrete, wrapped in welded steel mesh.10
- 1968 The British Railways Board patents a concrete fill, reinforced with chopped steel wire, for the hole around a floor safe.11
The common thread is cash. Belknap’s inner door had a slot, so an attendant could drop the day’s takings in without being able to get them out again; only the collector had the key to the inner door.2 That’s the ancestor of the deposit safe under the counter of many petrol stations and shops.
Mosler, Diebold and Chubb floor safes
People search for Mosler, Diebold and Chubb floor safes by name, so we looked. We didn’t find an in-floor model in the Mosler and Herring-Hall-Marvin trade catalogues of about 1960 that we searched, nor a floor-safe patent assigned to Mosler or Diebold. Most safes sold as a “Mosler floor safe” or “Diebold floor safe” are free-standing ones, so start with our histories of Mosler safes and Diebold safes, which cover their plates and serial numbers.
Chubb is the exception we can document: its Australian company was patenting floor safe improvements by 1960.4 Chubb sold its safe and strongroom business to the Gunnebo group in 2000, so safes sold under the Chubbsafes name since then are Gunnebo’s.12 Our history of Chubb safes covers the earlier firm.
How to date an old floor safe
With an in-floor safe you only get to see the top, so look hard at the door or lid. Any name, patent number, lock maker or address will be there or on the lock behind it. A patent number cast or stamped on the door gives you an earliest date, and a lock you can identify narrows it further. With a free-standing safe you have the whole body to work with: the plate wording, the address, the construction, castors and serial numbers.
Our guide on how to date an old safe takes those clues one at a time, from “Ltd” on a British plate to ZIP codes on American ones. If you’d rather tick boxes, the how old is my safe tool narrows the date from what you can see. Don’t try to remove the lid or the lock to look for marks: that’s a job for a safe engineer.
Can’t read the marks?
Send us photos of the safe’s door, any plate and any numbers, with a wider shot of where it sits, and we’ll tell you what we can about its maker and age.
Found a floor safe in a house you bought
It’s a common surprise: the carpet comes up in the new house and there’s a steel lid in the concrete. Two questions follow. Does the safe belong to you, and does whatever is inside? They have different answers. This is general information, not legal advice.
The safe itself in the UK: a fixture
English law has used the same test since 1872. In Holland v Hodgson, Blackburn J said that things resting on the land by their own weight are not part of it unless the circumstances show they were meant to be, while “an article which is affixed to the land even slightly is to be considered as part of the land” unless the circumstances show it was meant to stay a chattel. The Court of Appeal called that passage the most helpful statement of the law as recently as 1996.13
A safe cast into a concrete floor is about as firmly affixed as anything gets, and it was put there to make the building more secure. It is very likely to be a fixture that passed to you with the house, unless the contract or the fittings and contents form excluded it. A heavy free-standing safe is the opposite case: it rests by its own weight, so it starts out as the seller’s chattel, though one bolted down may count as fixed. If it’s in doubt, ask your conveyancer to settle it with the seller’s side in writing.
The safe itself in the US
Each state has its own rules, but the logic is the same. California’s Civil Code treats a thing as affixed to land when it is “imbedded in it” or permanently attached to what is permanent “by means of cement, plaster, nails, bolts, or screws”.14 Courts elsewhere weigh how firmly the item is attached, how it relates to the purpose of the property and whether anyone intended to make it a fixture.15 An in-floor safe scores on all three.
Shops and offices add a twist. A “trade fixture” is something a tenant attached to rented premises and is entitled to take away when the lease ends.15 So a floor safe in a former shop may have belonged to the old tenant rather than the landlord, though few tenants ever dig one out. Check the lease or the sale contract before you assume.
What’s inside it
Owning the safe doesn’t make you the owner of its contents. The rules on finding property, with real cases from Ohio and Texas, are in our guide to what to do when you find a locked safe in a house you bought. Tell the seller, agent or executor before it’s opened, and expect a safe engineer to ask for proof that you own the property: one UK firm requires it on every job.16 Expect damp, too. A US safe retailer warns that “most floor safes are not watertight”, so paper left in one for decades may be in poor shape.17
No key, no combination?
Don’t drill, lever or cut at a floor safe yourself. Apart from the risk to you and to the contents, a damaged lock makes the job slower and dearer for the professional who has to finish it. Call a qualified safe engineer: the Master Locksmiths Association lists them in the UK, and the Safe & Vault Technicians Association in the US.18
An antique floor safe is always set into the floor.
Auction houses and dealers call free-standing safes on castors “floor safes” too, and most listings are that kind.
The seller still owns the safe in the floor.
A safe cast into concrete is almost certainly a fixture that went with the house, unless the contract said otherwise. The contents are a separate question.
Once it’s open, it will lift straight out.
Flanges, bolts and mesh were designed to key the body into the concrete. The concrete has to be broken out.
An underfloor safe is insurance approved because it’s in concrete.
Ratings come from a test certificate for that model. An old safe without one has no rating until your insurer agrees one.
Can an old floor safe be removed?
Yes, but it was built to make that hard, and it’s rarely worth it. The patents above are a list of ways to stop a floor safe leaving: Hahn’s flanges, Belknap’s tapered body and base flange, Martin’s bolts and welded mesh, and the British Railways Board’s wire-reinforced concrete.1,2,10,11 The Master Locksmiths Association lists underfloor safes among the safes its members can move, then adds: “very rare that underfloor safes are moved”.19
A removal usually runs in this order:
- Get it open and empty it, using a safe engineer if there’s no key or combination.
- Find out what’s in the floor around it. Breaking out concrete can hit reinforcing bar, post-tensioned cables or underfloor heating pipes, so they need locating first.17 In a flat or an upper storey, ask a structural engineer before anyone breaks into a slab.
- Break out the concrete around the body and lift the safe out, with lifting gear if it’s large.
- Take away the rubble and the safe, and fill and level the hole so the floor finish can go back.
What it costs
We couldn’t find a single published price for taking out an underfloor safe; firms quote after seeing it. What we can give you are the published prices for each part of the job, checked in October 2026:
| Part of the job | Published price | Source |
|---|---|---|
| UK: safe removal and disposal, up to 500 kg | From about £110 + VAT; more for heavier safes, basements and stairs | MLA estimate19 |
| UK: removal by a specialist safe firm | “A starting price would be £250” | Safe removal firm20 |
| UK: breaking out concrete | £45–£60 per m² (slab up to 100 mm); £60–£80 (100–200 mm); £75–£90 (reinforced) | Builders’ cost guide21 |
| UK: taking the rubble away | Grab lorry £180–£350 a load; skip £245–£600 | Builders’ cost guide21 |
| US: moving a safe, typical job | $250–$500 | Locksmith Ledger 2024 survey22 |
The breaking-out area for one floor safe is small, so in practice you’ll pay minimum charges rather than square-metre rates, plus the floor finish on top. Set that against what you get back: removed floor and wall safes were asking £15 to £20 on Gumtree UK in October 2026.23 For most owners the cheapest answer is to leave the safe in place, empty and unlocked, and mention it when the house is sold. Our guide to moving or getting rid of an old safe covers removers, scrap yards and councils.
A free-standing floor safe is a removal job rather than a building job, but weight is everything. Working from Cary’s own catalogue weights, we reckon a Cary floor safe like the 35-inch one above weighs in the region of 1,000 lb (450 kg). Put your safe’s measurements into our safe weight calculator before you ring round for quotes.
Insurance ratings for underfloor safes in the UK
British insurers limit how much cash and jewellery they’ll cover in a safe by its rating. The rating comes with the safe: an approved safe has been tested by a laboratory and comes with a certificate that states the cash and valuables ratings it meets. The valuables figure is ten times the cash figure, and both are for overnight storage.24 Modern floor and wall safes are sold at cash ratings from £1,000 to £35,000, and a Eurograde 1 safe typically carries £10,000 cash and £100,000 valuables.25 Insurers also expect a Eurograde safe to be anchored into a concrete floor or solid wall, which an underfloor safe is by design.25
Read the paperwork, not the advert. One retailer lists a Securikey underfloor safe with a “Cash rating £10,000” and, a few lines further down, “Not insurance approved”.26 A figure without a test certificate behind it is a suggestion, and the retailer itself warns that an insurer may not pay out on a safe that isn’t approved to a specific rating.24
An old underfloor safe almost never has a certificate, and many predate the tests altogether. Treat it as unrated until your insurer has seen the maker, the size, the lock and photos, and confirmed any cover in writing. If the cover matters, a modern certified underfloor safe is the reliable route. We explain the same problem for free-standing antiques in buying an antique safe.
Buying a floor safe, and what antique ones are worth
Searches for “floor safes for sale” mix two very different shopping trips. If you want a safe to protect things, buy a new or reconditioned certified underfloor safe and have it fitted: a UK retailer lists Securikey underfloor models at £669 and £1,029.26 An old in-floor safe that has been dug out of someone else’s floor is rarely worth buying for use, since it has no rating and needs fitting into fresh concrete.
If you want an antique floor safe for the look of it, you’re buying a free-standing one, and prices run from almost nothing to thousands. Size and weight push the price down, because the buyer pays to move it; original paint, a working lock and small size push it up.
| Safe | Price | Kind of price, date |
|---|---|---|
| Milners’ patent floor safe No. 212, 26 × 26 × 32 in | £10 | UK auction hammer, April 202127 |
| Cary floor safe, c.1900, 35 in high, working | $288 | US auction, 20146 |
| Small Victorian Milners safes, UK dealer | £325–£845 | Dealer, sold, checked October 202628 |
| American safes in original paint, 260–315 lb | $1,575–$1,650 | Dealer, sold, checked October 202629 |
| Marvin parlour safe, c.1870, at a specialist sale | $9,440 | US auction, March 201330 |
| Floor or wall safe, removed | £15–£20 | UK private asking, October 202623 |
These are public prices, not a valuation of your safe. For the reasoning behind them and many more examples, see are old safes worth anything? Before you bid on any big safe, get a moving quote for both ends: the £10 Milner made sense only to someone with the lifting gear to collect it.
Need a hand?
Send us photos of your floor safe, its door and any numbers and we’ll tell you what we can about who made it and when. Tick “Moving it” or “Selling or rehoming it” on the form if you need a safe remover.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns a floor safe in a house I bought?
A safe cast into the floor is almost certainly a fixture, so it normally passed to you with the house unless the contract excluded it. What’s inside is a separate question: tell the seller or executor before it’s opened.
Can you remove an underfloor safe?
Yes, by opening it, breaking out the concrete around it and making good the floor. It’s rarely done, and it usually costs more than the safe is worth, so most are left in place.
How much is an antique floor safe worth?
Most antique floor safes for sale are free-standing. Big ones can make £10 to a few hundred at auction; small safes in original paint with working locks sell for hundreds to about $1,650 from dealers. Removed in-floor safes ask £15 to £20.
Who made old floor safes?
The in-floor safes we could trace were patented from 1926 by small American inventors and firms such as In-A-Seal Safe Corporation of New York, and by Chubb’s Australian company in 1960. “Mosler floor safe” and “Diebold floor safe” listings are usually free-standing safes.
Is an old underfloor safe waterproof?
Don’t count on it. Even a safe retailer says most floor safes are not watertight, so check old contents for damp and rust.
How do I open an old floor safe with no key?
Call a qualified safe engineer, and have proof that you own the property ready. Don’t drill or force it yourself.
Sources:
- Harry W. Hahn, “Lock for floor safes”, US patent 1,717,682, filed 1 November 1926, granted 18 June 1929. ↩︎
- Samuel L. Belknap, “Double door floor safe”, US patent 1,887,866, original application filed 13 December 1926, granted 15 November 1932. ↩︎
- Armel Stuart Holleyhead, assignor to In-A-Seal Safe Corporation, New York, “Locking device for safes”, US patent 2,365,343, filed 15 May 1941, granted 19 December 1944. ↩︎
- Chubb’s Australian Co. Ltd, “Improvement in floor safes”, Australian patent 243,896, application dated 12 September 1960, published 4 April 1963 (bibliographic record via Google Patents). ↩︎
- Designing Buildings Wiki, “How to install an underfloor safe” (last edited 23 November 2020). ↩︎
- RM Sotheby’s, Auburn Fall 2014, lot N508, “Antique circa 1900 Cary Safe Co. Buffalo, NY Floor Safe”, 35 × 23 × 24 inches, on casters, sold $288. ↩︎
- 1stDibs dealer listing (Dayton, Ohio), “Antique Diebold Safe & Lock Company Small Cast Iron Floor Safe Working Ohio 24”, 24.25 inches high, late 19th century (checked 27 October 2026). ↩︎
- George Hayter Chubb, Protection from Fire and Thieves (London, 1875), chapter on fire-resisting safes, via Project Gutenberg. ↩︎
- Rex H. Campbell, assignor of interests to Walter P. Ross and Robert Q. Bramlet of Oakland, California, “Floor safe”, US patent 2,669,198, filed 26 December 1947, granted 16 February 1954. ↩︎
- J. C. Martin, “Improvements relating to floor or wall safes”, GB patent 1,155,307, priority 20 September 1965, published 18 June 1969 (abridgment). ↩︎
- British Railways Board, GB patent 1,227,434 (concrete in-fill for an aperture accommodating a floor safe), filed 25 April 1968, published 7 April 1971 (abridgment). ↩︎
- The Chubb Archive, “Early sales, offices, Chubb Group, 1980s and on”. ↩︎
- Simon Hill, 33 Bedford Row, “Affixing objects to land or buildings: losing title to the objects” (27 February 2023), quoting Blackburn J in Holland v Hodgson (1872) LR 7 CP 328 at 334–335, and discussing Botham v TSB Bank plc (1996). ↩︎
- California Civil Code, section 660 (“Affixed to land”), via california.public.law (official text at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov). ↩︎
- Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, “Fixture” and “Trade fixture”, Wex legal dictionary. ↩︎
- The Safe Engineers (UK), home page: safe opening prices, “No open, no fee”, proof of ownership and makers opened (accessed 26 October 2026). A trade firm’s own published prices. ↩︎
- Safe and Vault Store, “How to install an in-floor safe: a step-by-step guide for concrete and wood floors” (first published 2010, updated August 2026). A US safe retailer’s guide. ↩︎
- Trade bodies: Master Locksmiths Association (UK) and Safe & Vault Technicians Association (US and international). ↩︎
- Master Locksmiths Association, “Safe removals, relocation & disposals” (checked 27 October 2026). ↩︎
- Trident Safes, “Safe removal and relocation” (checked 26 October 2026). A safe removal firm’s own service page. ↩︎
- Best Builders, “Concrete removal cost UK” (updated 28 August 2026). A UK builders’ cost guide. ↩︎
- CLK Supplies, “Locksmith Price Survey Breakdown: What You Should Know for 2024” (21 October 2024), summarising the Locksmith Ledger 2024 National Locksmith Price Survey. ↩︎
- Gumtree UK search results, private asking prices (checked 26 October 2026; listings change daily): “antique safes”, “chubb safe” and “floor safes”. ↩︎
- Simply Safes, “Insurance approved safes” (checked 27 October 2026). A UK safe retailer’s explanation of AiS approval and cash ratings. ↩︎
- Simply Safes, “Eurograde 1: EN 1143-1 certified safes”, including its “Floor & Wall Safes” rating categories from £1,000 to £35,000 cash (checked 27 October 2026). ↩︎
- Simply Safes product pages (checked 27 October 2026): Securikey Protector ABP 4, underfloor, “Cash rating £10,000”, “Not insurance approved”, £1,029; Securikey Safeguard Plus 4 Deposit, certified EN 14450 class S2, £669. ↩︎
- Crow’s Auction Gallery, Dorking, Antiques & Collectables, 14 April 2021, lot 1227: “An antique Milners’ patent floor safe, No212”, 26 × 26 × 32 inches, hammer £10 (checked 26 October 2026). ↩︎
- Antiques Atlas dealer listings marked sold (checked 26 October 2026; the price shown is the dealer’s last listed price): Milners polished steel safe, c.1900, £845; Milners fire-resistant safe, c.1870–80, £325. Category page: Antique safes. ↩︎
- Harp Gallery (dealer, Kaukauna, Wisconsin), sold listings (checked 26 October 2026): Hall’s safe, patent 1906, original paint, 315 lb, sold $1,650; Herring-Hall-Marvin safe, 1890s, original paint sealed, 260 lb, sold $1,575. ↩︎
- Morphy Auctions, Premier Advertising sale, Denver, Pennsylvania, 29–30 March 2013, lot 183, Marvin Safe Co. parlour safe, c.1870, $9,440 including buyer’s premium. ↩︎
