Gem of a find: Contents of downtown Ann Arbor's mysterious safe are revealed
Pat Rabchun and other Budget & Stadium Towing employees spent six hours trying to break into the 8,500 pound safe.
Jeffrey Smith | for AnnArbor.com
Two opals were found inside of the safe that was in the Tower Mini Market on Maynard Street. The price tags on the gemstones are $250 and $190.
Jeffrey Smith | for AnnArbor.com
One of the safecrackers, Pat Rabchun, said the opals were found in leather pouches with documentation and two price tags: $190 for 1.27 carats and $250 for 1.67 carats.
It was not immediately clear when the opals were placed in the safe — because no one knows how long it's been locked. Previous estimates suggested that the safe — which is six feet tall, three feet wide and three feet deep — was anywhere from 25 to 41 years old.
Kris Keller, owner of Ten Fine Jewelry & Design and previous occupant at the Tower Mini Market space, said it's "very possible" that the opals are worth more today.
"We figured there might be something small in there, so that's about right," Keller said. "It's very possible they have increased in value."
Hopefully the paperwork inside the safe didn't contain any government secrets. It was mostly ruined by water damage during the attempts to open the safe.
Now, Rabchun said he will split the contents with Tower Mini Market owner Nabeel Gneym, who yesterday offered anyone who could successfully crack the safe 50% of the contents inside.
Rabchun, who works at Budget & Stadium Towing in Ypsilanti, decided he was up for the job, so he came to pick up the massive safe outside the Tower Mini Market on Thursday evening.
“You know, I wondered if I was wasting my time,” Rabchun said. “But you never know, it was too exciting to pass up.”
Rabchun took the safe to Budget & Stadium Towing at 876 Railroad St. in Ypsilanti. From there, Rabchun and his employees brainstormed ideas about how to open the safe.
They spent six hours trying to crack the safe, using a wet saw to cut the hinges from the safe door, hooking the door to a semi-truck and using a torch to melt the safety pins.
“This was a really big safe,” Rabchun said. “It wasn’t an easy job.”
Gneym inherited the safe when he moved his convenience store into the first floor of the Tower Plaza Condominium complex in downtown Ann Arbor in May.
The safe had been in the building since the 1980’s, when jewelry store owner Matthew Hoffmann purchased two Fichet-Bauche brand safes for his store, Matthew Hoffmann Jewelry Design.
When Keller took over the jewelry store, he said the combination and key to one of the safes had been lost.
"When we went to move, the safe was too large to take so we left it because we didn't have the combination or the key," Keller said. "If there's something in it, I don't know, but it was going to cost us $1,000 for a safe-cracker to get into that."
Although Gneym was told by different locksmiths that it would cost anywhere between $600 and $1,000 to open the safe, Gneym said strangers emerged out of nowhere offering with promises to open the safe after he offered half the contents to the person who could help solve the mystery.
“We had tons of people coming by,” Gneym said. “People were trying to open it or look at it all day.”
When asked whether solving the mystery was worth it, Rabchun laughed and said, “No, but it was fun.”
Lizzy Alfs is a business reporter for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at 734-623-2584 or email her at lizzyalfs@annarbor.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lizzyalfs.
Comments
Tim Gillespie
Thu, Jul 14, 2011 : 9:02 p.m.
The idiocy of this astounds me. This safe WAS worth something in the neighborhood of $4000. A competent safeman could have opened and repaired it in 2-3 hours, leaving it in perect condition and available for sale to someone who needed one. Instead, you have the six stooges spending six hours to destroy a perfectly good safe. As a safeman of 35 years experience, I recommend they stick to towing cars.
15crown00
Sun, Jun 26, 2011 : 8:15 p.m.
lots of repeated articles. lots of unimportant articles.lets have new stuff and things that actually matter.
nixon41
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 4 p.m.
How many days are you going to post this? It's old news now.
Oregon39_Michigan7
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 2:15 a.m.
Another example of private business waste.
Rod Johnson
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 3:25 p.m.
Yeah! Another exa... wait, what?
EyeHeartA2
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 5:20 a.m.
...but of course you weren't forced to pay for it. Why is that hard to grasp?
Tru2Blu76
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 11:28 p.m.
There you go again, AnnArbor.com, presenting another intriguing series stories from right here in Ann Arbor. From the beginning, you've told us you were dedicated to providing local news because that was what we readers want. Why, oh, WHY do you have to go on fulfilling your mission statement day after day??!! LOL! One bit of niggling on this story: It might have added a little pizzaz if you'd arranged to have someone take video of the final stage of safe cracking. The actual opening of the safe and seeing people discovering the contents, I think, would have been a plus. Now, lets all get busy finding the rest of the abandoned / unopened 4-ton safes in town. This could be Ann Arbor's new claim to fame (in addition to all the others). A new official city seal would be: Tree Town & Safe Cracking City. BTW: I was out on Mast Rd. and Huron River Drive around 5 PM but didn't see anything but deer standing in yards and on the roadside. No bears.
Roger Roth
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 10:35 p.m.
Camp comments writes: ""Lizzy Alfs is a business reporter ... ." Really? Is this a business story?" Sure is! All that work for so little? It's a metaphor for the 21st century working class. :-)
slave2work
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 9:15 p.m.
Isn't it nice to read something besides the drama of Michigan football.. This was fun ,guessing what could be in there. Speaking of to many articles... i get sick and tired of seeing 15 stories on the same thing for the big kahuna U of M football. heaven help us if there is ANYTHING else going on
Tom Teague
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 8:38 p.m.
My third favorite type of comment: castigating annarbor.com for its news judgment when it runs a particular story. My thought is "So maybe someone else wanted to read it." I'm sure annarbor.com has a way of figuring out whether people are clicking on a story - if nothing else, they can count the comments which have been plentiful. It was a good story exactly because it was light, easy to report, and caught the public's imagination. It was hard to make political comments about it (although some tried), it revealed a sense of community curiosity and creativity, and it played into a common fantasy of finding an unexpected fortune (okay, that didn't happen). Anyway, imagine the hue and cry if someone opened the safe and annarbor.com DIDN'T report it.
andys
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 8:26 p.m.
I'm shocked there is anything of value in the safe. Usually the parties involved end up with zippo for their efforts.
nixon41
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 7:37 p.m.
Seems like the NEWS repeats itself frequently:(
Rod Johnson
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 3:23 p.m.
So do the commenters, and they're usually less interesting.
andys
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 8:17 p.m.
Come on, its a followup piece to a story posted yesterday. Its fun. Is this not the kind of local interest story you come here for? annarbor.com has a niche to fill, and I think this is right up their alley. Good job Lizzy!
A2K
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 7:11 p.m.
I'd say an opal worth $250 40 years ago is worth...$2000 now? Where's a stone expert when you need one :O)
Lola
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 3:43 a.m.
As an amateur gemologist I'd say the value is about the same now unfortunately. These don't appear to be exceptional specimens and they're relatively small. Someone might be willing to pay a bit more than that though just to be able to say they have one of the opals that was busted out of the Tower Mini Mart safe.
treetowncartel
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 7:01 p.m.
They should have called in Charlie, Paulie and Barney.
towny
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 5:38 p.m.
What about value of steel the safe is made of. Massive amount of the safe's weight in steel is probably worth a lot of money.
Jeff S
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 6:42 p.m.
They tried to get some scrap money for it but it had too much concrete.
Atticus F.
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 4:56 p.m.
What a fun series of articles. I consider myself to be a bit of a modern day treasure hunter, so my imagination has been swirling the last couple of days with thoughs of all the riches that might be inside. Thanks Lizzy!
Macabre Sunset
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 4:35 p.m.
Quality is everything with gemstones, and opals vary considerably. I would be surprised if the appraised value is much more than the price tag, and also surprised if they could get even close to half of any appraised value outside of a jewelry store. Much of what you pay for at a jewelry store is the reputation of the jeweler.
Camp Comments
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 4:23 p.m.
"Lizzy Alfs is a business reporter ... ." Really? Is this a business story?
tdw
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 6:23 p.m.
Some people will whine about anything
Will Warner
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 4:15 p.m.
Who remembers that the bank on the corner of Pauline and Stadium used to have a vault in the basement? It was at the bottom of a spiral staircase. I know a guy who knows a guy who had a safe-deposit box down there and he was never given the opportunity to retrieve its contents before the remodelling that filled in the basement! He says that the other guy says that they also forgot to take all the money out of the vault! I'm just sayin' it might be worth lookiing into, late some night....
Leah
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 2:43 a.m.
Ooohh. Count me in if we can split the findings 50/50!
breadman
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 12:22 a.m.
Great Lakes Federal savings!! Spiral stair case to the safe deposit boxes in the basement.
KJMClark
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 4:12 p.m.
Of course, those price tags are from the 70s/80s. Those two gems are probably worth a good deal more than that now, and they have their documentation, so no one will need to verify their quality.
JSA
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 4:05 p.m.
Darn, I was hoping they'd find Geraldo Rivera in the safe!
A2comments
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 11:31 a.m.
If they had, many would have wished they had not opened it...
lindsay erin
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 3:57 p.m.
So, does "50% of the contents inside [the vault]" mean one of the two opals or 50% of their combined value? Opal drama.
Olive
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 3:55 p.m.
Really, A2.com? Is there such a paucity of news in the A2 community that the first and subsequent articles about the safe have somewhat dominated the Top New Stories secion for the past few days? It's a fun human interest-ish story, but what the heck? Or is it just filler? Today there are 3 articles from yesterday, and 3 articles about the same story. (Pioneer student/teacher/MTV) in the Top News Stories section. This has been the trend for awhile. What's going on?
Rod Johnson
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 3:22 p.m.
Just about every story here has some variety of this comment on it. It's tiresome. Let's just stipulate that someone is going to think any given article is not news, slap a "why is this news" disclaimer on it, and people like olive here can just... go work in their garden or something.
Maxwell
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 : 2:09 p.m.
It beats reading another "article" by Rich Kinsey...
Chrissa
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 7:19 p.m.
Really? Is it not rapey and murderish enough for you? What is wrong with you guys? Seriously, it's a fun piece about something neat. I think you just want to find *something* to gripe about, I just hope the A2.com posts are your only outlet.
Forever27
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 6:37 p.m.
lighten up and just be glad that the news in this town isn't dominated with rape, murder and political corruption.
pvitaly
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 3:48 p.m.
I was hoping for those zombies I was promised
pvitaly
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 6:45 p.m.
Zombie kill of the week goes to...
lindsay erin
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 6:42 p.m.
@Tom Teague I completely agree with you. You are obviously quite versed in zombie behavior and I appreciate your knowledge on the subject. @Major .. I'm not sure if I should be excited or terrified of a possible zombie apocalypse? I'm still hoping to live out some of the scenes in Zombieland so... Anyways...the safe...yeeeah.
Major
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 5:40 p.m.
Hey not so fast there...they probably and unwittingly released a Zombie creating pathogen by busting it all up like that! Gather your supplies now, the Zombie Apocalypse is coming!!!!
Tom Teague
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 5:23 p.m.
The Zombies probably just mingled into the crowd and slipped away unnoticed. With Bill Loy's missing jackhammer no doubt.
lindsay erin
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 3:54 p.m.
HAHA YES! I knew there was another zombie hopeful on AnnArbor.com... I'm sorry for my false statement. My zombie predictions are usually more on point.
dading dont delete me bro
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 3:32 p.m.
pictures please, i should've said, but since there is no edit feature on comments...
dading dont delete me bro
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 3:31 p.m.
pictures of opals since there was no jimmy hoffa in there.
Jojo B
Fri, Jun 24, 2011 : 3:31 p.m.
Fun! But I'm not sure if "lucrative" should be used as an adjective here if it costs you $500-$1000 to find a $250 gem. Still, this was a fun story and treasure hunt! I was hoping they would find gold bars and counterfeit Fabergé eggs. :)