Realtor Lockboxes

Hi-

I have a personal "in" with the head of a board of REALTORS in our area. They're retiring some of their old lockboxes, and the company says that we're welcome to recycle them if we want to.

These are the boxes they have:


The bodies look to be cast aluminum. They have a shackle made of something else (Top part), and should have a circuit board inside.

Does anybody have any advice on these?

Thanks!

Break one open an give us the nitty gritty.

Or we'll cross check you.

With a golf club.

Sirscrapalot - Locks take all the fun out of snooping. - Some snooper.

Yeah-

I'm thinking of higher firepower, too. I was assuming that wedging them apart would be the easy way.

I was thinking about making a jig to hold the box in place while using a hydraulic cylinder with a wedge attached. For power, I think one of these is manly enough:



Would a manly diesel powered splitter ram split the box in half, or create a giant mess and end in chaos? I'm assuming that a farm implement cylinder would drive a wedge through it, slicing the lockbox in half?

I conveniently have access to a farm tractor, and some cylinders, so I thought that it might be a huge time saver. I have about 100-150 of these boxes to do. Plus, a diesel powered splitter is pretty manly, right Don't worry- if I do this, I'll post a video.

Now, hardened steel is classed as scrap iron, right?

Any ideas? Will I even make any money on these?

I would check out ebay first before you broke them down. a quick search found that 20 of the sold for 495. And 15 for 300ish. Alot better than scrap.

If we get any working ones, eBay it is. Most of these have problems with either the shackle release mechanism, or the key box door. A fair amount of them have been drilled by locksmiths.

The board got these 5 years ago. They're dropping like flies. But, if it's fine with them, I'd be fine with selling the working ones to another REALTOR/board.

But, sadly, most of these will be dead. I'd bet at least 1/2 are dead.

Once they are opened, I'll bet they come apart fairly easily. -Like door locks, to rekey them you need to have the original key to take them apart.

Maybe you can mix and match parts to make some good ones.

Getting them apart might be fun with a big hydraulic press, but you are probably better off to use a blue nosed dragon.

Hardened steel is treated as plain old steel. Unless it is a stainless steel alloy, which can pay a little better.

Jon.

I'd expect the boards to be Gold plated.
Anything that's outside and has concequences if it doesn't work, tends to be Gold plated against the elements of rain and ice and heat.

So what did you ever figure out with these?

We're still waiting for final approval at the next board meeting. I've seen some of the boxes, but not all of them.

If the board allows resale, some will go to eBay. The rest will be broken down. As soon as I have some junk boxes, I'll find what works best. We'll probably use a hydraulic splitter off of our tractor. I have access to all the stuff for free, so...

I'll keep everyone posted on this as soon as we have the boxes.