Collectibles insurance protects your collection from theft, flooding, and accidental damage. Art, Persian rugs, model trains, coins, and other high-value items can be part of a collection.
Collectibles in a home can be worth more than the home itself, or at least enough to be listed as assets on a separate policy for the full value to be paid out. In 2020, a rare Pokémon card cost the rapper Logic $183,812. In 2014, Action Comics #1 from 1938 sold on eBay for $3.2 million. Most collectibles can be insured for 1% to 2% of their value per year. But your collection doesn’t have to be worth millions of dollars for you to want to insure it.
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What is insurance for collectibles?
Collectibles insurance protects valuable items from theft, accidental damage, and mysterious disappearances that homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover. They know that most collections don’t lose value over time but rather increase in value. Homeowner’s insurance only covers a certain percentage of the total value of your home. Sometimes, that isn’t enough to replace your collection if it were ever destroyed, damaged, or stolen. Even if there is enough coverage in dollars, the policy may only cover certain collectibles, like fine art or Persian rugs. This means that the loss won’t be fully covered.
Your insurance policy for your collection may also cover it when it’s not in your home. For instance, you can customise a policy to cover your things in the mail, while you are travelling, in storage, or while they are on display at an event.
How do I get a collection insured?
Insurance companies will want proof that you own it to ensure a collection, a detailed list of what’s in it, and a third-party valuation, like a bill of sale or appraisal.
You can quickly research and get an estimate with online quoting tools. Then, you can contact insurance companies or consultants to get a more accurate quote. Insurers will want to know more about your lifestyle related to the collection so that their agents can suggest policies that will protect you the best. For example, are you a dealer who often takes your collection of baseball cards to shows? You’ll need a policy covering theft, damage that happens by accident during shipping, and missing items.
How much does insurance for things you collect cost?
There are two main ways to cover a collection with insurance. Adding an inventory schedule rider to your homeowner’s policy is less expensive. Even though these riders might have a lower annual premium, they might not cover you enough. When that happens, it makes sense to have a separate collectible policy that lists each asset.
Look for policies that cover the full market value of your collection, not just the cash value or the cost to replace it. Expect to pay between 1% and 2% of the insured value for these policies. For example, the premiums for a $100,000 baseball card collection could be about $2,000 per year.
How to Chose the Best Insurance for Collectibles
We looked at 16 insurance companies and decided that these seven were the best in their class. Some of these seven companies are brokers backed by 30 to 50 AM Best-rated financial institutions. This gives them a large pool of knowledge and value to draw from.
We chose companies with a wide range of insurance products, like hundreds of different collections or insurance products that go well together and can be bought together to save money. All of the winners used the same pricing strategy: to offer the full collector’s market value plus 1% to 2% of the collection’s appraisal or bill of sale as a premium. We always prefer companies that are easy to work with and have simple online tools and email and phone options. Companies with easy-to-use online processes for everything from applications to claims to customer service rose to the top.
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