Bonjour Stephane, they are often referred to as salesman’s samples and are pretty rare but do appear for sale occasionally.
There are lots of variations of them- from different manufacturers worldwide in all shapes and sizes.
the American manufacturers often made them in elaborate fitted cases for carrying but the safes often had no backs, whereas the British ones are usually complete safes with backs and lockable with mini locks, but without an outer carrying case.
Some of the american cannonball miniatures are very impressive and have fetched incredibly high prices but although intricate and detailed they are somewhat simplified in the reduced scale.
I’ve seen chubb and milners miniatures including double door examples and know of George price and think also a Cyrus price, so assume that Tann’s and the other major makers would have made them.
They were clearly only made in very small numbers and here in Britain many were attributed to factory apprentices as part of their apprenticeship and learning.
There were chubb miniatures including a beautiful 10 inch approx circular vault which formed part of the Wolverhampton apprentices getting hands-on experience of the factory machinery, right through until the late 1970s, perhaps even early 80s. Have often wondered what happened to all that stuff once gunnebo took over.
I have a load in storage from tiny one inch/25mm keyring sized vault doors, a few miniature chubb, fichet and rosengrens bankers safes and doors, a few cannonball safes, to vault doors with fully operational hinges and boltwork in a few scales, but they are mostly reproductions from the last 35 or 40;years and most (but not all)were made by me!
Btw you could also consider antique safe money boxes / coin banks if you want something smaller to evade detection and avoid divorce !
