The watch and jewelry collecting journey is often two-fold. On one hand, watches and jewelry are an investment and a growing asset class—there’s an inherently practical aspect to building a collection. On the other hand, the most important part of the collecting journey is having fun and fully enjoying your collection. When I mention the topic of safe storage, you may inherently think this falls into the former, more practical category, but you might be surprised to learn that investing in the right storage solutions for your watch or jewelry collection can be fun too.
“We can literally customize every aspect of our safes,” shares Lynel Brown, owner of Brown Safes. “We can make every size and configuration you can imagine,” she continues, “from the colors to the wood finishings and the stitch of the leather—we’ve had customers match the design to their Ferrari—anything you can imagine, we can do.”
Brown Safes is one of the recommended safe vendors from our underwriting partner, Chubb, one of the world leaders in property and valuables insurance. Before we get too deep in the fun parts of selecting and designing a safe to suit your unique personal style and collection (plus room to grow, of course), let’s take a step back to some of the more important components of safe storage.
According to Chubb’s Annual Wealth Report from 2024, protecting a watch or jewelry collection is cited as a major priority, and theft is one of the top concerns among collectors surveyed. A whopping 81% of collectors reported they worry the most about theft, and 67% believe that damage to their collections during travel is their biggest risk—and, particularly in recent years, these fears are valid.
“Post-pandemic, we’ve really seen an uptick in home burglaries in high-end neighborhoods,” confirms Tannie Ng, Chubb’s Vice President of Fine Art, Jewelry & Valuable Collections. “Today’s burglars are sophisticated,” she continues, “they’re targeting specific homes, they know exactly what they’re going to steal, they’re bringing wrenches, torches, or cutters, or even bringing tools to steal the safes outright, even safes that weigh 200 pounds and more—the burglar isn’t just one person, it’s often a group ripping the safe off its bolts, throwing it down the stairs, dragging across the floor, and then loading it into their car in short order—just 10 or 20 minutes.”
I literally got chills as she was describing this to me—I wondered how collectors can battle this new type of sophisticated thieves. However, Ng reassured me, “We advise all our clients to build up layers of protection, so if one layer of defense goes down, another is in place.”
Before a burglar can access your safe, it starts with access to your home, and having a home alarm system that accounts for the areas of your home that are the most vulnerable (like the second floor) is key. “Today, it’s not difficult for someone to scale to the second floor of a home,” Ng emphasizes. “Unfortunately, these sophisticated burglars can also have the means to disable an alarm component, so another layer we suggest to our clients is adding motion sensors or a dedicated alarm on the safe door itself or the room where it’s stored.”
Now, let’s get down to the safes themselves. Chubb recommends a safe with a security rating of ideally TRTL-30×6, which means it’s going to take at least 30 minutes to force open that safe with a torch and tools. Weight is also a factor to consider—of course, the heavier the safe, the more secure. However, weight can also come with constraints when it comes to home installation, so finding the perfect safe for the value of your collection and configuration of your home is important. Thankfully, Chubb’s recommended safe vendors like Brown Safes provide white glove service to take out all the guesswork.
“We’ve been in business for 45 years,” explains Brown, “and there’s always a point of contact available for you from the moment you want to design your safe to the delivery and installation, then, of course, down the line for servicing if there’s an attempted theft.” With Brown Safes in particular, Hodinkee Insurance customers get the unique benefits of free crating on all safes (an average of $200 in savings) and a 50% discount on the cost of shipping within the continental U.S., in addition to a dedicated point of contact from start to finish.
Let’s end on a high note and come back full circle to the more exciting aspects of investing in a safe for your watch or jewelry collection. Our partners at Chubb emphasized the importance of a safe not just being a one-and-done purchase but an investment in the security of your collection that’s a daily part of your routine, just like brushing your teeth, and Brown agrees. “There are misconceptions that safes are just these ugly gray boxes that should be hidden away, but we want customers to use and enjoy their safe every day as they rotate the pieces they wear in their collection.”
As it turns out, a safe isn’t a means to conceal your collection for security—it’s a means to organize your collection in a way that allows you to enjoy it more, and it can even give you the opportunity to display your collection in a beautiful way. “One of the coolest things we’ve done for our watch collecting clients was to design a safe with a window made of ballistic glass,” describes Brown. “So, it’s just as secure, but the collector can also display a row of their favorite watches.”
If you have additional questions about designing a safe for your watch or jewelry collection and taking advantage of the unique benefits available to Hodinkee Insurance customers through Chubb’s preferred safe vendors, please send us an email at insurance@hodinkee.com.
Cait Bazemore
2025-09-24 15:00:00