Fred K wrote:
Bob Chasan wrote: Hey all, I am an insurance agent and I can tell you for my company my visiting and viewing someone’s collection is not enough. There are PLENTY of independent appraisers who will (given some direction) view several websites to determine value. They will then provide a “Certified” evaluation. This is going to be what is needed in the case of loss. The appraiser shouldn’t be too expensive probably in the $200 range. I have someone who insures a HUGE comic collection. The appraiser did the initial and all he has to do at this point is keep an excel spreadsheet of purchases and sales. Unless he gets a particularly high value comic in which case he needs to keep the record of the transaction as well as photos of that issue.
Shamefully, I haven't insured my collection yet and really should. Between collecting TD tokens, old comics, and old gaming books, I definitely know my homeowners insurance isn't enough to cover it all.
Brad - if I wanted to get a separate policy for collectables, how would that work? My homeowners insurance company hates me because of too many claims (we've been flooded 3 times in 20 years plus 2 other incidents.) We barely can get them to do homeowners insurance for us. Any suggestions?
Fred
You might think I'm joking, but...
If you want a stand-alone policy, that's often called "inland marine," which sounds like an oxymoron to me. Your most economical option may be adding it onto an existing home owners/renters policy, but you could call around and get quotes from other companies if your current one isn't cooperative.
And you're definitely going to need lists and photos, and probably appraisals, if it's a stand-along policy. You don't want to insure your collection for $10k and find that it was only worth $5k so you spent way too much on premiums, nor do you want the reverse to happen. Insuring it for 5k and finding out your loss was actually 10k will be sad, but at least you'd get 50% back.
While you're at it, it wouldn't hurt to get quotes on replacing your other policies. They're going to find out about your claims history going back some number of years, so they may not see some of your earlier ones. You current carrier knows about all of them. Independent agents can often get you multiple quotes at once, while captive (tied to one carrier) agents may only give you one for their company, so you'll have to call more of them. Insurance is heavily regulated by the states, so calling multiple agents for the exact same policy from the exact same carrier should get you the exact same quotes. It's not like one agent can (legally) give you a discount the other can't. Some companies share quote information so that you can get auto quotes from multiple carriers, but I'm not sure that the same info sharing is available for non-auto.
DISCLAIMER: I've worked in three insurance companies in IT, never as a licensed agent, so anything I say is just offering ideas, it's not "advice." Always check with someone who knows more. Shouldn't be hard to find millions of people that fit that description...
"Ceci n'est pas une pipe" - Magritte