I was sitting on the couch letting my Thanksgiving dinner digest and perusing the stack of black Friday sales in the newspaper. While I enjoy looking through the Best Buy ads, I really spent some time on the Menards, Northern Tool, and Dick’s Sporting Goods ad.
I was surprised to see that Menards had a 28 gun Cannon gun safe on sale for just $399. Wow. A name brand gun safe that large for that cheap? I know that stores like to almost give away things on black Friday to get people into their stores, but this seemed too good to be true. The next day, I got my Costco circular in the mail that comes with all the ads for the upcoming month. And wouldn’t you guess, but there was another Cannon Safari safe on sale for $449.
I figured that this has to be a super cheap model or something to sell it for so cheap. I decided to do some research and understand what both these companies were selling.
- Costco claims to be selling a Cannon Safe Safari 5521 DLX Executive Vault at a $150 discount for $450. It is 240 pounds with a 20 minute fire rating and electronic lock. It is 21″ x 17″ x 55″.
- The Menard’s safe is a little larger at 29″ x 20″ x 59″. They claim it is a 28 gun fire safe that weighs 382 pounds with an electronic lock and a 30 minute fire protection. Unfortunately, there was no information on Menard’s website about this safe.
In doing a Google search, I can see that Cannon sells the Safari line at while many large retailers like Cabelas, Walmart, and even Sears sell Cannon Safes, but only some safe specialty websites talk about the Safari line. It appears that in 2011, Cannon reworked their entire safe offerings. They expanded to additional models and discontinued the Safari line.
I could not find the 5521 model, nor another 28 gun model in that low price point on most of these big box retailer sites. I did find a reference to the Safari line on a couple smaller safe websites and at Sam’s club. The sites that still displayed information about this line said that is is made of uni-body construction and 12 gauge steel. It appears to have a lightweight fireproof interior, but this is really just sheetrock, which is probably the lowest form of fireproofing used in safes.
Cannon Safes has an excellent warranty that includes 100% replacement for the safe after a fire or burglary attempt/entry. This is one of the best warranties in the safe business. Interestingly, the Costco safe has only a 1 year warranty. The Menards one was not listed on this website and so I am not sure of their warranty.
I contacted Cannon to see if I could understand the warranty issue on the Costco safe. Here is an excerpt of the chat I had with them:
- Cannnon Rep: Thank you for contacting Cannon safe/Gunvault how can i help you today
- Todd Christiansen: I saw that Costco’s website has one of your Safes, the Cannon Safe Safari 5521 DLX Executive Vault available at an excellent price. Their website says it is only a 1 year warranty. I thought all your safes have a lifetime warranty. Can you explain?
- Cannnon Rep : its is a entry level safe
- Todd Christiansen: Even your Scout series, which is your current entry-level gun safe, has a lifetime warranty. Why the change?
- Cannnon Rep : no that is a cannon safe and the difference is the lock, re locking pin
- Todd Christiansen: But the one at Costco is labelled as a Cannon Safe. Is that not your product?
- Cannnon Rep : [yes] but that is a safe made specially for Costco with there [sic] specs
- Todd Christiansen: I see. Didn’t Cannon previously sell a Safari series of safes about 1 year ago? Isn’t that the same series?
- Cannnon Rep : yes we did but not with those specs. they were large rifle safes and manufactured 3 years ago
- Todd Christiansen: During the 1 year, would I contact Cannon or Costco for Warranty issues?
- Cannnon Rep : cannon safe
- Todd Christiansen: Great. Thank you.
This explains a bit about this. Many other big box retailers such as Cabellas, Home Depot, and Dicks have safe’s OEM’d for them and put their name on the product. In reality, they are made by Liberty Safe, Stack-On or someone else. In Costco’s case, this is made by Cannon, but the marketing person must have figured that having the Cannon name would add value (and they were correct). I assume the Menard’s version of the Cannon safe is the same deal.
Since I have not seen either of these safes, you should do some additional research when you see them in person. Are these really 12 gauge, do they have any extra features not listed? Just understand what you are buying.
This is one heck of a price point for a decent fire-proof gun safe. This is not the best gun safe out there compared to the Sturdy gun safe, but if you are looking for a name brand gun safe that can hold a decent number of guns and is fire-proof, I think this is worth the purchase at that price point.