Hey,
What's the best way to store bitcoins safely without a ledger/other hardware wallets?
Thanks
Shopping List: A form of sheet metal, (galvanised steel etc) an engraver a pencil and ruler and an hour or so.
Transfer your coins to a paper wallet that you have rolled offline, engrave the private key onto the sheet metal (store in a safe place until needed). Destroy the paper wallet once you have verified what you engraved is what you have engraved.
(If you know what you are doing you can also acid etch the QR code onto metal to mask what it is).
Another one I've read is create a three of four or even four of five etc wallets with the various priv keys stored as above in different locations, one or two can even be brain wallets if you're super paranoid about security and don't care what happens to the coins if anything untoward happens to you.
Another one I'm investigating is time locked TX which I haven't managed to get working properly as yet, so I can't recommend it.
the correct name is "Casascius" and it is not offline storage, it is a physical bitcoin
I'd hardly call a gimmick silver coin with a sticker over a QR code a secure method of storage.