There are an estimated 25 million safe deposit boxes in America, and they operate in a legal gray zone within the highly regulated banking industry. I had never known that one can have a feeling like that.” “I was never like that in my life before. He struggled to find the right words to describe the day he discovered his watches were missing. At age 67, he has a strong Polish accent and speaks English carefully. He paused in his retelling of the memory. Then, on April 7, 2014, he lifted the thin metal lid.
The bank kept one the customer held the other. A foot-thick steel door sheltered cabinets filled with hundreds of stacked metal boxes, each protected by two keys. First National became First Union, which was sold to Wachovia, which was then bought by Wells Fargo. Over the next few decades, the bank - a squat brick building on a low-rise suburban street - changed hands many times. In 1983, he signed a one-page lease agreement with First National State Bank of Edison in Highland Park, N.J., for a safe deposit box. The vault at his neighborhood bank seemed ideal. Poniz was an internationally known expert in the history and restoration of high-end timepieces.Īt first, he kept his personal collection in his house, but as it grew, he wanted something more secure. His hobby became his profession, and by the time of his relocation, Mr.
He had been gathering unusual pieces since he was a teenager in 1960s Poland, fascinated by their intricate mechanics. In the early 1980s, when Philip Poniz moved to New Jersey from Colorado, he needed a well-protected place to stash his collection of rare watches.
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