Renters Insurance and MtG

[dakkon]

With all the discussion about theft lately I am thinking about getting my cards insured through my renters insurance (State Farm). Collectibles fall under "personal property" with SF and you can purchase protection plans based on the estimated value of your collection. For a $20K collection, the premium is ~$200 on top of renters insurance (which doesn't cost much).

If any of you have such policies 1) do you have to get your collection appraised by a third party? 2) if not, would getting it appraised help you in the event of theft since you can provide a list of what is missing and their value? 3) if you were unfortunately a victim of theft, were you able to collect from the insurance company? Thanks.

[soltakar]

With all the discussion about theft lately I am thinking about getting my cards insured through my renters insurance (State Farm). Collectibles fall under "personal property" with SF and you can purchase protection plans based on the estimated value of your collection. For a $20K collection, the premium is ~$200 on top of renters insurance (which doesn't cost much).

If any of you have such policies 1) do you have to get your collection appraised by a third party? 2) if not, would getting it appraised help you in the event of theft since you can provide a list of what is missing and their value? 3) if you were unfortunately a victim of theft, were you able to collect from the insurance company? Thanks.

Having recently spoken with State Farm about this topic, this is what they told me had to be done to have your cards covered by a renter's policy: you must have your collection appraised by a third party, take pictures of your collection, and submit the pictures and appraisal to State Farm.

[rxavage]

My insurance company said that an appraisal wasn't necessary but pictures would be necessary. I did find it odd that my sports cards were not covered though, but if I had highly valuable ones that I would need a third party appraisal. Now I have to photograph all of the cards and make a collection list to make things alot easier in the future for something that will hopefully never happen.

[dakkon]

Just as an update I got my collection appraised by a LGS and had the store owner write a letter for State Farm. I gave up on sorting all of my cards and decided to only pull out cards that are >$10. I recommend sorting them by card type and then alphabetically.

I typed out an inventory on excel and had the LGS fill in the value. For renters insurance it is estimated cost to "replace" and not retail prices. State Farm also wants pictures of the cards; this is when sorting them comes in handy because the pics will match up with the excel sheet. I just laid out ~40-60 cards at a time and a 12 MP camera takes a good enough shot to capture the cards (and card names).

Everything came out to ~$30K and the premium to cover them is ~$300/yr. Now that I have a spreadsheet, I can see myself cutting down to only legacy/vintage staples >$20 after this first year which will cut the premium cost in half.

I would recommend getting at least power and duals covered since ~$15K of coverage was $120/yr. On the flip side, if anyone has been an unfortunate victim of theft and has cards covered by renters' insurance, I would like to know whether it came through for you. I would hate to go through all this trouble and screwed twice.

[rxavage]

I am covered for 35k for 240$/yr on my renters insurance. I really need to get on top of cataloging my collection.

[dahcmai]

I had to get an appraisal for my house insurance policy. If you go over certain amounts it's practically mandatory. I went well over the 100k mark so it got a little on the expensive side so I put a couple of the more valuable items like Lotuses and such in a safe deposit box to cut costs on the overhead value. It's cheaper to do that than to insure and the deposit boxes are insured. A good idea anyway if you have some seriously valuable items like summer stuff or test prints. (Wish I had those).

It's also tricky to find values on rarities so be sure to drill them with questions about them since you aren't going to find "replacement" costs on some cards.

[Misplayer]

I just scheduled my collection (a paltry $9000) on my homeowners policy and the rate for "collectibles" seems bad @ $30 premium per $1000 of coverage. However, I only had to submit an inventory and replacement cost value.