I received an update to my house insurance the other week and I realized I should look into updating the insurance to take into account some high-end items I own, namely my musical instruments and my comic book collection.
In the end, it turns out that through my insurance, as long as my musical instruments are not being used for professional purposes, then there is no limit. I found that odd considering I could own a lot of vintage guitars and not play professionally. But who am I to question the insurance companies? 😉
As for the comic books, that’s a different matter. They will only cover them up to $3000 unless I get them professionally appraised and then they can talk about increasing premiums to cover them. This is a tough call on my part. Last night I was logging some new comics and realized I own 2700+ books. Now, I can definitely say that the majority of them are from the 90s – onwards which I’m assuming can be found for $1 a piece if I really looked hard enough. But if I didn’t look hard and simply walked into a comic book store, they would definitely be at least $3 for some of the heavy hitters like Spidey and X-Men for example. So how does insurance work? Do I look at it from the angle of what it would generally cost to replace an issue (hence, $3 a pop which would come out to around $8000, or do I go the other route and think that with time, I could probably find some great deals and nab them for $1 a piece?
So now my question about appraisers come into play. How do they appraise something? Do they look at price guides and that sort of thing to determine what the general price is at this moment in time? Or do they think about the real logistics of hunting down a deal?
I guess it comes down to wondering if an appraiser will be worth it considering a) It will cost me money and b) It will most likely increase my premiums.
Thoughts?
Also, here’s a note to all of you…think about any extraordinary items that you want covered on your insurance. I would hate to see that vintage record collection burn to dust.
4 replies on “Updates to Insurance”
Do you have to produce a receipt for what you paid for the guitar if something happened to it? DAD
You’re probably right in that assumption. Remember when my original guitar got stolen? They definitely wanted receipts of some sort!
Hard call to make on the guitars. I know I don’t have any of my receipts…
As for appraising the comic books, instead of paying for a professional service, divide your collection into what you would estimate to be $3000 worth and ask for some friends that don’t collect comic to store them at their place. (i.e. Vero could keep a stack, I may be able to find some room somewhere safe from Philippe in the house.)
What I’m getting at is, you don’t need to have your hands on the entire collection at all times. When you want to do some changes in the organization or just look through a bunch, you could pick up the books you are storing at friends’ places. Then, even if you do get broken into, or you are subject to some other bout of ill fortune, you don’t lose it all.
If you want to do something like that for the guitars, I got room for two extra guitars here, five if I put some of mine back into cases. I am more than willing to help out a friend with his guitar….I also have room for an amp!
I have a separate “Personal Article Insurance Policy” for all of my guitars/recording equipment/amps, etc. I opted for a separate policy as it allows for coverage not only at home, but expanded coverage while travelling, or gigging. The policy covers all kinds of “what if” scenarios. I know I have some overlap coverage with my house insurance. The way I see it, I’ve invested a lot of money over the years, so I want to make sure I am covered in case something bad happens.
As for receipts, I have provided my insurance company with them (if I have them), as well as any documentation, serial numbers and photgraphs.