Large cache of keys help!

[gardenscott]

Hi. A couple of days ago I was detecting an old house from the late 40's and I dug up a stash of keys. 89 to be exact. They were in four different holes about a foot apart in a straight line near the drive way. They are all from the Illinois lock co. All have different numbers and cuts. My guess is that they are safety deposit keys. Why would some one bury all these plus in four different holes? I would think that if they didn't mean anything that someone would just throw them I'm the trash. Anyone have any thoughts

 

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[cw0909]

cool find gardenscott,some of the keys look like old desk drawer cam lock keys
i found over 140+ beer cans once in 2 holes,and a 2# coffee can full of lead wheel weights
makes me crazy thinking why,when you find strange things you know someone deliberately buried
Illinois Lock Company :: DC722

 

[osage express]

They may have been a kids cache.I like finding things like that....Neat find ....Osage

 

[cudamark]

Might have been a locksmith who lived there and these are the miscuts? He might have just saved them all for the brass value and then died before he was able to scrap them. You should see the collection of keys I have! Metal detecting for almost 43 years now and having parted out thousands of vehicles, you end up with quite a few!

 

[bigfoot1]

I'm going with postal keys....prolly retired and shouldnt have em

 

[GrizLeeBear]

Safe deposit keys generally have a different shape and do not have I/D numbers on them. I have seen PO Box keys that look like these, as was suggested. No other guesses.

 

[cudamark]

I change my mind and agree with GrizLeeBear. If they were miscuts, they wouldn't have I.D. numbers stamped into them. Might still have been a locksmith but more likely the one in charge of the PO boxes. When the box changed owners, they had to rekey them, right? These are probably the old keys turned in by the previous box owner.

 

[Paleopilot]

Maybe from a Frozen Food Locker plant, they used keys like that exclusively.

 

[LuckyThirteen08]

Whatever the reason,Those numbers have/had a purpose.Make a list and start your research,SHouldnt be terribly difficult to find out what they were intended for. Thats a really kool find!!

Thanks for sharing,
HH John

 

[LuckyThirteen08]

You may find this interesting,Northeast lock company makes Illinois Lock Company replacement master and grandmaster keys,Kinda makes me say WTF considering illinois lock company itself builds ball bearing slides,Go figure lol

Replacement Keys - Northeast Lock Company

Edit: as said before though,Im betting by the serial numbers,Those are old PO Box Keys from the bit of research ive done online