Re: Mosler safe worth

Deborah, a T-20 rating is an older U.L. rating for tamper/burglary resistance. It was a label seen on many fire safes of the era that were built to provide fire reistance and some (not heavy duty) buglary resistance.

A Class B safe is a safe constructed to pass a UL fire rating test and must protect paper documents from fire damage (charring, singe, or incineration) for 2 hours. A Class C is a one hour safe and a Class A is a 4 hour fire safe.

There is a different test series for rating serious burglary resistive safes.

The SMNA tage is a similar rating, the "F" signifies a fire rating, the "D" signifies a drop test, meaning during the fire test a safe of identical construction was exposed to fire, then hoisted and dropped 30 feet to simulate a safe in a house falling through a burned out second story floor to the basement. If the safe bursts open or the contents sustain fire damage the safe design fails the test.

A general rule of thumb for valuing older safes (yours doesn't qualify as antique) might be to learn the new price of a similarly rated and sized safe and start at around 50% of that, give or take depending on cosmetics and operability. Good luck.

A note to all who might read this: A locked safe for which combo is unknown is not worth much if anything until it's open. Too many people buy used locked safes and are surprised at the cost of getting one open by a professional safeman. Don't be surprised, remember they are designed to be tough to open.