Valuing Your Collection for Insurance Purposes

What you want from insurance if your collection "disappears" is replacement value.

That eliminates CDN; most of us cannot buy at those prices.
Auction value is probably a bit lower than replacement value.
My thinking is I want to report retail value.
To that end I've been recording Coin World values.
I suspect Numismedia and similar valuing tables would be other options.

Does this seem reasonable to you?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I agree. What good is insurance if I am not actually able to replace my entire collection?

 

Something call a safety deposit box?

 

Those are not a guarantee. Scores of safety deposit boxes got flooded in my area from Hurricane Katrina.

 

I'd think that if you can back up what you paid, they'd have little trouble accepting that. So what you're talking about is getting the current value? That seems smarter but harder to track of course. Red book prices aren't that current but if you look at each yearly issue, prices don't fluctuate much for most issues I think. It would seem easiest to report yearly then. Sorry if I seem naive, insurance stuff is new to me

 

Aren't slab coins watertight?

 

No. From what I've read they're just sonically sealed (sound proof?). I think someone has tested them in water

 

So thunder is ok, but no floods?..

 

When I lived in N.Y. years ago and had renter's insurance; USAA did NOT cover coins in the policy. I had to take a completely different form for my coins. I was a hassle but in the end it was worth it. JMHO.

 

I know it's a PITA. It requires a rider on a normal, house-hold policy. At first State Farm said to get an "appraisal" and submit it. I took all my coins to my LCS and he gave me an appraisal, most of it based off an Excel sheet I printed summarizing everything. I submitted that and then was told that every coin over $200 requires an individual appraisal. They wouldn't do bulk coverage without that.

After all that BS, there was no way I was going to comply....so I rented a couple SDB's at my local bank. LOL

Call your insurance company and get details on this. You may find it's not worth the trouble!

 

The new PCGS ones are, but there is a difference between dropping it in water for a few minutes and a hurricane flood.

 

I called USAA about insurance for my collection. They required receipts for every single coin, required professional appraisal for every coin (pcgs, ngc counts). In the end if an incident occurred they would have reimbursed me for the lower of the two. So if the value of a coin increased over 20 years I was told I would get amount on the receipt. I love USAA but the coin insurance was not worth it for me, I spent my money on a 800lbs safe instead.

 

I am that new guy again. Not being knowledgeable with these abbreviations you all use.I need a tutor to guide me. Can someone give me a list of the meanings
of these letters you use?

 

CDN is a price guide for coin dealers.
PCGS and NGC are professional grading companies.
LCS is Local Coin Store.

The rest is just kind of texting abbreviations unless I missed a couple but for example JMHO "Just my honest opinion".

 

And PITA is Pain In The...uh...uh...some anatomical term, maybe Abdomen?

 

While in a drug store, a little old lady (honestly...I swear) hit and totaled my van. Her insurance company called me and told me they would give me $X since they had determined that was fair "replacement" value. When I asked them where they got that number, they quoted a Craigslist price from a city 1000 miles away. To make a long story short, they said take it or lump it.

 

I'm a new guy to this as well. Here's what I have found so far to help me understand the lingo.

http://web.stanford.edu/~clint/coinacro.htm

http://www.pcgs.com/lingo

I'm there are plenty more, but these two have pretty much covered all the bases for me so far.

 

Terrible. It sounds like these companies don't make it easy to insure coins. I guess coins are kind of difficult, since they have individual, fluctuating values, and we have many of them. A safe (bolted to ground) and/or SDB are good options then.

 

If you are an ANA member, you can get very reasonably priced insurance for your collection through Hugh Wood. If you're not an ANA member, being able to get the insurance might be more than worth the annual cost. If you have a lot of certified coins, using the grading services' registries and valuations might be a good idea. You have an online list of what you have, as appraised (which includes grade and valuation) by an independent party. You don't have to play the registry set building game to benefit from using the registry.

Trying to deal with traditional homeowner's policies and agents that sell them is not the way to go here.

A safe deposit box will do you no good if your collection disappeared other than providing an empty spot to put your new one. It also doesn't affect valuations.