Hey folks,
I run a lot of lockpicking villages and such, and have a pretty big collection of locks, picks, and knowledge. A ton of people ask me how to get started, and unfortunately I don’t think there are any particularly good walkthroughs of how to get the basic stuff needed to start. Since Peterson just announced their winter sale, and I’ve had several requests to recommend lockpicking-based Christmas gifts, I figured this would be a good time to post some info!
Lots of the advice I see is around clear (acrylic) locks and progressive locks. I’m gonna be slightly controversial here by saying: clear and progressive locks are almost universally bad for learning or training - they’re badly made, unrealistic, have cheap parts, etc. They’re great for learning how locks work, but not for any serious practice.
In this post, I will talk about a few things: what are the first picks you should get, what are some good locks to practice on, and what are good resources to use for learning?
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