The Trick With Diversion Safes
Unlike their conventional cousins, diversion safes can be used for hiding things as much as safekeeping them.
Or perhaps, to put it more succinctly, they secure by concealing.
In the spirit behind the old adage that the best defense is a good offense, this sort of safe works not by brawn but by brains, so to speak.
Indeed, their construction almost always offers no tamperproofing capabilities whatsoever.
That’s because diversion safes are created out of otherwise everyday objects, just about anything from cans and candlesticks to electrical wall outlets and every generally carried coins!
Thus, given these realities, this type of safe isn’t “safe” in the traditional way often thought of of a safe.
They are not meant to endure tampering but to avoid it by not drawing any attention at all.
For that reason, they are also commonly known as as hidden safes, although technically speaking the safe isn’t usually hidden whatsoever; in fact, their usefulness comes from being right out in the open!
Also , they are oftentimes called by the more general term of concealment devices, particularly in connection with cases of espionage.
Common illustrations include suitcase with false bottoms and hollow fountain pens.
Coins were also utilized, made most well-known by the Hollow Nickel Case wherein a paper boy inadvertently discovered just such an object.
In early summer of 1953, Brooklyn newsie Jimmy Bozart was paid with a nickel that seemed too light.
Being a Brooklynite, the fourteen year-old was nobody’s dummy and tested his doubts by dropping the coin, whereupon it popped open on the ground to expose its contents.
Jimmy told a pal who was the daughter of a New York City police officer who of course told her day who told a private investigator who went on to inform an FBI agent….
It turned out that the coin contained microfilm with an undecipherable series of numbers.
Four years would pass before a fecting Soviet spy finally cleared up the mystery: it was simply a coded greeting to a recently arriving KGB officer!