Investors seem to be heading for the mattress and safety deposit boxes, avoiding even the dollar and euro fixed income.

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We protect the money itself by placing it in banks, safety deposit boxes and the like, but we rarely protect its value.

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Auctioning off the contents of unclaimed safe deposit boxes is a big business in the U.S., producing an estimated 23 billion in sales over the years.

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Thousands of safe deposit boxes are declared abandoned each year and by law, banks may sell their contents after unsuccessful attempts to find the rightful owners.

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One estimate says there are around 10m extant bearer passbooks, many of them hidden away, perhaps even forgotten, under mattresses, in wardrobes and in safe deposit boxes.

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Other pieces include white ceramic dishes stamped with the ship's red "White Star Line" logo and leather handbags that some of the ship's pursers stuffed with money from safe-deposit boxes.

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As part of the ongoing scheme, employees and vendors were paid in cash while hundreds of thousands of dollars were hidden in the restaurants, in personal safes, and in bank safe deposit boxes.

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When property including bank accounts, bonds, dividends, uncashed paychecks, utility deposits and contents of safe-deposit boxes lies unclaimed for a period of time and the owner can't be tracked down, it gets turned over to the state.

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They would sometimes deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows in HSBC Mexico's branches.

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