Civic Museum of Regina solves mystery of long-locked safe

Two weeks and eight hours of safe-cracking later, the Civic Museum of Regina has opened a long-locked safe.

“We had a volunteer that was actually travelling across Canada, who had a background in safe-cracking, who came in and spent five hours one time. And as he was passing through again, (he) spent the last three hours and eventually opened up the safe,” said Rob Deglau, the museum’s community co-ordinator.

The museum put out the call on Oct. 11 searching for somebody able to crack the 100-year-old safe, which was locked in 1979 and then donated to the museum in 2001. A now-closed furniture business was the last owner of it.

Deglau said the man who found the right combination lives in Ottawa and wanted to remain anonymous. He said he was passing through Regina for business.

“He had done some safe work in his business and wanted to bring a listening device so he could listen to the tumblers,” Deglau said.

The man had apparently figured out three of the safe’s four combinations, went home and “talked with some of his peers, and came back the next time again with his equipment. And sure enough he was able to get his equipment.”

But instead of finding a hidden jackpot, they found a second locked door, a safe within a safe. It was secured with a key.

Fortunately they found an old key that managed to do the trick.

“Sure enough we used a 1930s national cash register key that just managed to clip (the lock) and was able to open that up,” Deglau said.

Inside, he found a pristine, perfectly mint paperclip. The rest of the safe was bare.

“It was enough to buy a house … If we know the story, the guy took a paperclip, kept on trading it and it was enough to buy a house,” said a chuckling Deglau, referencing a story from the mid-2000s when a man turned a paperclip into a home in Kipling through a series of trades.

Million-dollar jackpot or not, Deglau said the responses the museum received from the public reveals how people want to belong.

“Everybody wants a puzzle, everybody wants to be a part of something, right? So what this did was really brought back nostalgia for a whole bunch of people on a national basis to talk about these old safes,” he said.

The museum will now start loaning out the safe to businesses that want to put it on display, Deglau said.

He figured the paperclip will also go on display.

“They made them the same 40 years ago as they do today,” he said.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Andrew Shepherd