At Champion, we want to make sure you have protection for things that matter the most. Just like your life insurance policy, a high-quality fireproof gun safe can provide protection for the things you love, or–at the very least–the essentials.

But you may want to reconsider before you load your fireproof gun safe with everything you find valuable. Keep in mind that it’s important to learn what your insurance covers before investing in a fireproof gun safe.

Because at the end of the day, some things will remain more valuable and more secure when kept apart.

Recommended

Guns

It makes sense that gun safes would create the perfect and most secure environment for guns. Champion Safes are designed to withstand break-ins, crowbars and fires up to a certain degree.

It also helps that guns are crafted from steel, meaning they’re durable enough to withstand difficult conditions that paper or more sensitive materials can’t.

Ammo

Many gun safe owners are skeptical about keeping ammunition inside safes for a myriad of reasons. For some, it may be the fact that some safes, when put in heated conditions, can’t keep the internal temperature low enough, which may cause some of the bullets to rupture and damage other items within the safe, such as documents or other non-resilient materials.  

Others believe it’s better to keep ammunition in a separate safe in case of a break in.

In any case, Champion Safe models are built with the capacity to withstand high temperatures and the resilience to withstand break-ins, but it’s still a good idea to keep your ammo in a separate safe.

Knives

Like guns, good quality knives are constructed in a way that instills a certain resilience in the overall construction, making knives great candidates to keep inside a gun safe. But also like guns, the handles may be made of wood or bone, so be sure to invest in a quality safe to prevent any damage to the handles in case of a fire.

Keys

By now, it’s safe to say that anything made of steel qualifies to be kept in your gun safe. Keys to your house, safety deposit box, P.O. box, storage unit and anything else are great candidates to keep in your safe.

Keep in mind, though, that just because it’s made of metal doesn’t mean it’s indestructible. Even steel can warp and lose its integrity if exposed to extreme temperatures.

Important Documents

Keeping important documents, such as your tax returns, social security cards, birth certificates and legal documents are usually good candidates to keep inside your safe. When doing so, however, just be sure to keep them in a separate safe from your ammunition and inside a durable, fireproof gun safe.

Jewelry

Unless your gun safe is also a jewelry-certified safe, some may be hesitant to recommend keeping jewelry inside a fireproof gun safe. Champion Safe models, like the Trophy Home Series, may be better suited to preserve jewelry due to their fire-resistant materials, thief-proof design and jewelry-friendly storage options, but because jewelry is made of different materials, be sure to double-check.

In any case, keeping jewelry inside your gun safe is a much more secure option than your wife leaving it on her vanity.

Not Recommended

The Deed to Your Home

There are many conflicting opinions regarding where the best place to keep the deed to your home may be. Some say to keep it inside a fireproof gun safe, while others recommend keeping the deed to your home and other documents inside a safety deposit box.

For now, the deed to your home and other important documents that you don’t need to regularly access should be kept in a safety deposit box. That being said, it’s perfectly fine to keep the key to your safety deposit box inside your Champion Safe.

Data/Media Storage

Plastic and heat-sensitive materials are, in some ways, more delicate than paper. The data encoded in USB drives, floppy disks and CD ROMs are much more prone to damages than paper is in a lot of ways.
If you access certain external software often, then you may keep various storage devices inside your gun safe short-term, but if you have anything with sensitive information on it that’s simply meant to be protected, then it may be better off in a safety deposit box.

Your Safe’s Inventory

If you rely heavily on your safe to protect your essentials, then it’s important to:

• Keep a log of what’s inside your safes
• Keep the log or written inventory outside of your safe

You can keep your safe’s inventory in a safety deposit box, on a USB drive, on a digital cloud, or in a physical place that’s accessible only to you and your loved ones.

That being said, it may be a good idea to keep a myriad of physical and digital copies of your safe’s inventory in various places to prepare for the worst.

There’s a lot to be said about what’s appropriate to keep in your gun safe and what’s not. There are a lot of great resources out there that are on the fence or oppose keeping the items above inside a gun safe, which is why knowing what your safe can and can’t protect will help you better prepare for the worst while protecting the things that matter the most.

At Champion Safe, our goal will always be to create the most secure safe for your valuables, no matter what they’re made of. Keep in mind to not keep anything in your safe that may damage your other items, like items that would compromise the humidity or the internal temperature inside a safe.

This protection will give you security and peace of mind against anything that may compromise it in the future.

If you are still having doubts about which gun safe to choose while looking for optimal protection, check out how our safes stood up against thieves and fires.