i mean, the cost to move any of my safes is very minimal. i have access to a pallet jack, etc. My new safe weighs 1100 lbs. I could move it with just another set of hands and a lift gate box truck. its just not very hard at all.
It all depends on how serious you get.
I know an idiot with $50k machine guns sitting in a $700 tractor supply safe.
There is one other thing I wanted to mention.
Most of us know that insurance for guns is severely limited on our home owners policy when it comes to theft. Typically the limit is $2000 to $4000.
What most people DON'T know is that when it comes to fire or flood, the limit on firearms is typically set at the limit of the contents of your home.
Insurance companies tend to provide more contents insurance than you need because they know it sells and that people never get near the limits. Contents insurance typically covers 50 to 70% of the value of the dwelling.
A policy on a $600k home will typically value the dwelling at $400k of that. (the rest is land. You don't insure the land against things like fire and flood). 70% of $400k = $280,000. If your furniture, pots pans, sporting equipment etc is worth $200k, that's $80k in insurance on your firearms against fire and flood included at no extra charge.
For this reason it's advisable to spend part of your budget (in both cost and weight) on a pure anti theft safe. If you forgo fire protection the safe can be cheaper and lighter. This allows you to bulk up the metal and theft protection for the same weight.
I have one of these safes. In it are items with no historic or emotional value. They are typically relatively high value guns. Typically modern rifles and shotguns are in this safe.
Which leads me to one other thing. If you are buying used commercial safes for pennies on the dollar, they tend to be heavier than gun safes. To help manage this, it's good to buy multiple smaller safes. When you have multiple safes you can break things down by need.
You can have a non fireproof high security safe like I mentioned above.
You can have a fireproof, high security safe.
And you can have a "convenience" safe with an electronic lock for the stuff you use often.
Just my .02.
Oh yeah. One more thing. Smaller safes are easier to hide. They can't attack it if they can't find it.
I have one friend who made up a dummy plenum coming off their furnace. It wasn't even a safe. Because he was confident nobody would ever find it. It looked like part of the furnace. But when you removed the cover there was a wood structure that held up some of his more expensive modern rifles and shotguns.
