My Humble (Massive) Collection
The greenish anodized aluminum picks by Ratyoke are the first ones he ever sold circa 2008-2010 and is a complete set of 9 picks.
The custom picks in the shadow box are all Ratyoke lockpicks, I have 15 of them in total. I have almost every custom cutaway Lockcracker ever made, these ones shown are from 2014-2015. I'm missing another half of my collection not shown here in these pictures due to moving, giving, theft, and time. What you see here is what is left. The smartest thing I ever did was empty out a closet and put the entire hobby in there. Everything has been untouched for almost 5 years now except for when I pick or add something to the collection. A lot of stuff is in boxes and not visible in these photos due to lack of space, but I can close my closet doors anytime I want and no guests will ever know about my 'humble collection'. It is possible I have one of the largest collections in North America, I think only Lockpicking Lawyer and Bosnian Bill have a larger collection. But I have seen some really nice collections on instagram these days so maybe I'm no longer in the top 3, maybe top 5 or 10 if I'm lucky. Lots of pickers out there now. Skill wise, I'm just a reddit blue belt, working on purple belt locks. 10 years, ago, purple belt locks were essentially black belt level, before there was a reddit system. I have a lot of catching up to do.
I also helped create the website Art of Lockpicking in 2014-2018, and provided content via interviews and articles and tutorials. Back then, if you googled how to pick a lock, our site filled the top 7 search results for google. So if you learned how to pick a lock back then, well, I'm your father.
I dont plan on making any new posts or content. There is enough great content on here and other forums these days. Everyone is an expert. I'm just here to show you that if you don't stop collecting, your inventory will grow, and you can literally tell the history of locksmithing, lockpicking, locksport, with the very tools you have in your possession. You wouldn't believe HALF of the stories I have. So I won't be telling them here. I will reply to comments in this post, please be respectful.
-flexluthier
P.S. I tried to find a way to post the pictures in line here, but I couldn't figure it out, imager wasn't doing it correctly but postimg seems to look distorted. any advice is appreciated and I will edit this post to show the pictures inline so you don't have to click on any links.
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