on all orders over $150*
on all orders over $150*
There are a lot of keys out there that, although you've seen one, still draw questions: How do I get this key? How do I order it? Does it even really exist? The good news is that a company specializes in bringing these keys to market. The company is Blue Dog Keys; it specializes in those hard-to-find key blanks. CLKsupplies is proud to announce that we are now stocking those keys.
We made a Hard to Find Key Blanks list with Phil from Blue Dog Keys. He will enlighten us with the pricing and shed some details with the keys on the list.
PRICING
PJ: Phil, about the pricing of these hard-to-find key blanks from you've seen with Frank's Key and Lock shop, as well as through Blue Dog, what's the best practice when it comes to pricing these hard-to-find keys?
Phil: Well, I would say in our shop, I mean, we took a little different approach a few years ago. I'd say probably three or four years ago. We're in a small town; we are the only lock shop here, so that has a little to do with it. We've done a customer cut a Kwikset key for two or three bucks. And, by the time that's all said and done, you're losing money. You made $2 on the key, but it took you five minutes to do it, so I think we raised all of our RV keys to $7 or $8 per piece. Our high-security keys we bumped up. But anything like the equipment keys that Blue Dog sells, $10-$15 on those. If you were to buy them from distributors, from you or the regular price to a locksmith on those keys, $3-$4 per piece, but we're working on a lot of these keys at about times four, and no one seems to care. You can't get them anywhere. I mean, you're either going to have to order it on Amazon or something like that or wait for it, and you've got it hanging on the hook.
TOP 10 HARD TO FIND KEY BLANKS
This list is not in order due to its popularity. It is based on sales; it focuses on what your customers' are looking for.
The BD98 is a pre-cut key for electric panels to code and SR251. You'll see it a lot on squared boxes and many different electrical panels.
BD15 is a Leviton electric switch key. You'll see a lot of these in schools, gymnasiums, and many public buildings where they don't want kids playing with the electric switches to turn the lights on and off.
BD654 is our most popular dispenser key, paper towel dispensers that you'll find in public bathrooms, and things like that.
BD61 is a SouthCo key. You'll find this on a lot of panel locks and the RBI head, and it was actually on the hood of the RV. It comes in a couple of different names. They also call it an E3-5-15 key. That's around tubular type key.
BD302 is another dispenser key - that's our most popular dispenser key. It's a pretty kind of gun and fits many different paper towel dispensers, toilet paper dispensers, things like that.
BD861 is an architectural mailboxes key blank. This is the earlier version that architectural mailboxes used to use. You'll find these mailboxes sold in Home Depot and Lowe's. We have Menards here in the Midwest, and they also sell those.
BD863 is also an architectural mailboxes key. This is the newer, more popular of the two, they're both quite popular, but the more recent models use BD863. Again, you'll find these in Lowe's, Home Depot, Menards, things like that.
BD955 is our stack on gun safe. We had these made up for us - plastic head key, you'll find these second gun safes. There are also a few other names that they go under, Double-sided key, and that's just one of our more popular safe type keys.
BD984 is a Global Link RV lock key similar to an SFIC 3. These are the originals from Global Link, and these have the purple head on them. They're pretty identifiable when they come into the shop.
BD371 and BD371R are our original keys for OMC. These are usually found on boats, things like that. There are four-eight different codes for BD371 and four on BD371R; they are around 70,71,72,78,79.
That's the great top 10 list, and I appreciate the fact that Blue Dog keys hunts down and finds them, even has keys made to help support the locksmiths.
'Yeah, we do what we can. There are some keys that, you know, the onesie or twosie type things that don't make sense, but if it's a popular key, Ilco, Silca, JMA aren't offering it yet. That's something we go after, so I would suggest to your customers if they would like to use our online catalog at bluedogs.com. They can register there; make sure you include a company name because we limit access to only locksmith and security companies. We don't want the general public trying to buy keys; we want them buying them through the locksmith. So, you know, the locksmith will refer a customer to us once in a while. We want the locksmith to buy the key and sell the key. So we don't allow access on the catalog to the general public, you have to have a lock shop that we can look up and see some Google listing or Facebook listing or something like that, but if they go to the bluedogkeys.com and just register, we'll check their registration now and approve them, and then you can see the variety of different keys on the website, things like that, search for them by part number or buy maybe a Tcode.' - Phil
