Protecting your Collection from the Bad-Guys, Part 2 -Insurance, Alarms, and Your Mind-Set. - By: Bill Harvey

INSURANCE:
Ever read the fine print on an insurance contract? Do so and it seems that they exclude everything from coverage EXCEPT -maybe- theft by Mongol horde of left-handed horseman stealing your stuff after the roof of your house was torn off by an inland tidal wave, in Kansas, on Thursdays, in months with an ‘R’ in them... or something. Talk to your insurance agent about your collection. It may be that all you need to do is to disclose to him or her -or the company- that you have a valuable collection in your home.

Likely that you might find that upping your coverage -and your bill- is a good idea -at least in your agent’s mind. Try this -send a return-receipt letter advising the company of the fact that you have a collection of X and ask what to do. Likely you will be ignored. Hold on to a copy of this letter and the delivery receipt and you might have a better’n average snow-ball’s-chance-in-hell of collecting on your loss. But you MUST have documentation -note the above.

Here is what I learned when talking to a couple of experts in the field -and I must stress that just because this is how most insurance companies work, your's may have completely different policies and practices! Remember how your agent tried to sell you the more expensive policy and you went with the cheap one? It may turn out that this decision comes to bite you in the ass if you are robbed. TALK TO YOUR AGENT!

Home-owner’s policies -or renter’s policies for that matter, cover you from a variety of risks -usually fire, theft, and storm. BUT it turns out that ‘storm’ may include the above mentioned tidal wave in Kansas but exclude tornadoes there. Conversely, it may include avalanche hazards in New Orleans, but exclude hurricanes. Also, ‘theft’ may OR MAY NOT include vandalism. Be hard to ruin a rock collection through vandalism -not so hard if it was a collection of porcelain figurines. Usually, and this applies more to home-owner’s policies, there is a total amount of coverage and some percent of this amount for ‘personal property” Remember you HS business class? real property involves land and buildings in some way, while you can take your personal property and go home. BUT (and don’cha love these buts) if you are in the business of buying, selling, and / or trading your collection, it is business property and is excluded.

BUT for items of more than about $3000, you had better have pretty good proof that you actually owned it, and it was indeed worth $3000+. Gets us back to listing, indexing, cross-referencing, and cataloging. An appraisal might be necessary. “I saw one just like it on “Antiques Road-Show” and the guy said it was worth $X00, 000.” ain’t going to get it done. Gathering prices -without hiring your own Antiques-Road-Show type wank- may take some imagination. For instance, there is Replacements Limited.com that stands ready to sell you a single plate to match great-gramma’s china what got broken. They also do crystal and silver. They will provide a “third-party” price so it doesn’t come down to you and the insurance company arguing as two opposing parties. Another possibility is an interesting company that acts as a clearing-house for stolen valuables. It’s not clear if it serves in America , but Swift-Find.com has excellent suggestions for both valuation / documentation and security.

Moving up a level -and moving up in cost, there is “named article” coverage. What it comes down to is that you can insure anything if you want to pay for it.* Such policies can cover all manner of risks -from your klutz of a nephew playing with his new golf-club next to your Waterford crystal collection to a meteorite turning your sugar-packet collection into a smoking hole in the ground. But notice the “named article” part of the title. The need to name AND DOCUMENT the items is rather the whole point.

SOME FINAL WORDS:

One old boy I spoke to said that jewelry boxes do a really good job of telling the burglars (or acquisitive “friends”) where the valuable stuff is. Keeps it all in one convenient place for him. If the box is on the small side, it even makes a convenient way to carry it all out to the back of their van. And I make jewelry boxes! Where do I get off on telling you they are not a good idea? I just do. I have also made more then a few pieces with hidden compartments.

Then there is the matter of alarms. The nice insurance expert lady that explained insurance to me points out that while alarm systems may be good things, you become a slave to the silly alarm and its keyboard and password. This from her own experience and for a hugely valuable china set her great gram’ma owned. Got to be too much of a pain to hurry to the keyboard and enter the password. Once a family pet -who ordinarily slouched around on the floor -was frightened by a lightening storm, jumped up on a couch and tripped the alarm. As is predictable -and in contradiction to my comments about the police above -this time they showed up -three cars worth of them.**

With or with-out insurance, with or without safes and alarms, you know how much time, effort, and maybe money you have invested in your collection. Sure, it's been fun, but step back a moment. How many hours? How much is this time worth per hour? How much actual money have you spent to buy those special pieces? Now does this not justify some small additional investment in protecting it? Ask yourself how you would go about stealing your collection. Once you have figured out to do it, button up that particular hole. Would most of your collection be better off in a safe in the basement and only a few items displayed in the living room? Perhaps a few items that you rotated upstairs and down.

I have sold my wares, (drawer and display cases specially designed for collectors) in various collectable shows and conventions. Had the chance to chat with many collectors (people who paid $5 to get in that morning) and dealers, (people who paid $500 to have a booth all weekend.) Both are collectors of some sort -both love their subject and take pains to be informed. Despite the similarities, there are differences. It comes down to... for want of a better word- professionalism. When your collection reaches a certain point -and only you will know when it gets there- you must -you MUST- adopt a degree of professionalism concerning your collection.

*True story -though it sounds like an urban legend- 20th Century-Fox had Betty Grable's legs insured with Lloyd's of London for the whopping sum of $1.25 million. When you stop and think about it though, this is likely more of a publicity stunt then anything else. She is going to misplace her legs? Perhaps they get vandalized? Or lost at sea in a storm? Betty is still here -alive and kicking, (well, perhaps not kicking) but her legs are gone? Or her cleavage is somehow inoperative, but they could still make movies with her? (Things were different then -perhaps it’s more important for women stars to have cleavage now-a-days.) For this they make life insurance and lots of people have insurable interests in other people who are not moms and dads. What do you suppose the value of them two quarterbacks is to the NFL in the weeks between the playoffs and super-bowl? Or for that matter, what is the value of a single throwing-arm to a single beer company? Staggers the mind.

** On the other hand, there is a town in northern California - Fremont- that made news for itself a few years ago. They decided that responding to home alarms was taking too much time away from traffic-ticket-writing and they were not going to respond anymore -unless the alarm companies paid then $20 or so to do so. Gives you a warm fuzzy feeling about our boys in blue, don’t it?

In Protecting Your Collection, Part 1, I talked about security -both general household security, and measures specific to collectors. Now I do HOW-TO on insuring a valuable collection -with-out breaking the bank by upping you premiums. Also, in some ways, security is a mind-set. Here is some advice on getting your head around it all.

Bill Harvey makes drawer and display cases for collectors and museums at Home-Museum.com.
He is also author of the COLLECTOR's HOW-TO series for dedicated collectors and hobbyists who wish to display and protect their very best stuff.