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As a kid, I owned a little grey plastic safe. Why? I do not know. I was only nine years old so I didn't have anything worth stealing. My most treasured possession was my Mega Drive and that wouldn't fit in the safe and I don't think anyone wanted to steal it either.

Here is a safe a bit like the one I had but not really.

Things I kept in my safe

Two of my teeth

This is true: I kept two of my baby teeth in my safe. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought I could trade them for petrol in a post-apocalyptic future when teeth become currency? Nah, the reason was that the teeth had been a part of me. They were now a memento from my childhood. It's the same reason my mom kept a lock of my hair from when I was a baby. She also had her own box of children's teeth in her bedroom so maybe she was just fucking weird though.

Ask rich people what they keep in their safes and they'll tell you things like insurance policies, passports, valuables and jewellry. What they won't say is children's teeth.

Data and Hard Drives.

A limited-edition pog

I kept a limited-edition pog in my safe. I did this because I thought it would be worth a lot of money when I was older, and even more money if I kept it in its transparent plastic wrapper, which I did. That pog was my retirement fund. Also, come to think of it, it might have been a tazo.

It had the words 'limited edition' on it, but aren’t all pogs limited edition? They’re not making them anymore – it’s not like there’s a factory somewhere that keeps churning out pogs.

In the end, I think I threw the pog/tazo away, in effect throwing away my entire retirement fund. There goes my dreams of retiring to the Bahamas.

A five pound coin

I also kept a five-pound coin in the safe. My nan gave it to me. The Mint had produced it to commemorate the new millennium. My nan said:

"Keep hold of this coin because it will be worth a lot of money when you're older."

But what she should have said was:

"Do you know how much this five-pound coin will be worth it in the future? Five pounds. Because that is what it is. A five-pound coin. And you might as well spend it now because five pounds will be worth less in the future due to inflation. Also, good luck finding somewhere that accepts it."

If I find that coin again then I would like to go into different shops and try to spend it. Probably nowhere would accept it as currency. I could try to put it into a vending machine but I doubt it would fit through the slot. Even if the coin did fit, it would probably get stuck in the inner workings of the vending machine. It would be like the time I was in Japan and I tried to put euros into a self-service checkout machine that only accepted yen, and the euros got stuck in the machine, so a very polite Japanese worker came over, bowed several times, apologised, opened the machine and took the euros out and handed them to me, bowed again, apologised and walked away, and at which point I immediately put the same euros back into the machine and they got stuck again.

So that was what I kept in my safe: two teeth, one pog and one five-pound coin. That was my emergency fund should things go down the shitter and I had to leave the country at short notice.

Safes for kids are available to buy at Amazon.