You’ve just got into lock sport, you’ve bought yourself your first kit of picks. That’s great but what should your first lock purchase be?
Now, you need something to pick. You guys know, I’m a huge, huge fan of the Sparrows progressive lock set. Buy that set off Pickpals, guys. If you don’t buy anything else, buy that. It will teach you all the skills that you need. On the other hand, if you go to a hardware shop and buy yourself some cheap padlocks, which is what almost everybody does, they tend to buy a whole bunch of Master Locks, because that’s what’s cheap and available, and the quality is absolute rubbish. Some of them are even these warded things, which don’t even have pins in them. They are just junk, and you can spend $100 on these things, get yourself a whole bunch, and they are rubbish.
What you need to do is, once you’ve decided that you want to pick some more difficult locks, buy yourself a lock that has a removable core. You can see that this part here is going to come out. You can remove that, and then you can change the pins. You can do all kinds of things with it. You will learn an awful lot more. For my money, the Avis 83 series, you can see that there, 83/whatever, 45, 50, 55, doesn’t really matter, are by far the best of them. That’s the Avis 83 core. That thing is a thing of beauty. If you got yourself a couple of those, and some tools, believe me when I tell you, you’re going to learn everything you need to know. First locks you buy should be the progressive lock set. Second locks you buy should be padlocks with removable cores. After that, you’re good to go.
