Bust halves from a fire

That's pretty funny as an exaggeration. Fortunately, it's not true.

A good quality fire safe or better yet a composite burglary/fire safe rated no less than 1 hour or better yet 2hours is designed to keep the interior at temperatures less than required to char paper, about 185F. These safes are always equipped with fire seals on the doors that swell and seal off as the temperature rises. However, the plastics we house our coins in will sag/melt etc. If your house fire is hotter than the typical 800 to 1200F and/or lasts longer than the usual 1 to 2 hour safe rating, the internal safe temperature will get higher than the rating. The plastics will definitely damage the coins at 400F.

But, because these safes dramatically limit the heat gain to the interior of the safe, it would not take much water going into the safe and exiting back out to keep the safe interior at a protective temperature of around 125 to 150F.

I have designed and built metal melting furnaces that operate at around 2300F and with 3" of castable refractory inside the metal shell, you can hold your hand on the outside shell after several hours of operation.

This is a practical solution to the problem and while implementation would not be particularly expensive, it would require a real commitment to building it because it would mean some construction changes to your residence.

OTOH, you could just do what a coin dealer acquaintance did: For his LCS, he just leased a former bank branch building with its own full-bore walk-in vault complete with internal fire suppression system.

 

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There is an LCS in my state that is on the third floor of a bank building. No messing around there.