Valuing a Collection for Insurance Purposes - How Do YOU Do It?

I have all my coins in an Excel spreadsheet. The less common items are listed individually but my tubes of Franklins are listed by number of tubes, not dates. A very few I have the cert numbers for, but almost all I have receipts for. Hopefully this is good enough.

I haven't seen anyone mention cost. If I had $500 dollars worth of junk silver (not face value but market value) and a certified St. Gaudens for a total collection value of $2000, what might my annual premium be?

If I had a collection worth $100,000 would the annual premiums over say 10 years pay for a really nice safe - the 'real' kind like a C-class that's bolted to the floor? Occasionally I see a commercial safe listed for cheap, but moving them is an issue. One was for sale from a renovated Safeway but it weighed a butt-load. It was a Mosler too. Probably 1980's -ish I'd guess but looked impregnable.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I just renewed my Hugh Wood policy for storage of my collection inside my home. I asked them about policy limits for home storage and they told me that when the insured value hits $25K, I would need to store my coins in a safe. For under that amount the premiums are very reasonable, well under $100 per year. I would have to pay more for a safe deposit box large enough to store everything, if one was even available.

I’m not sure if they take the neighborhood into account or if it is a flat rate. My area is very safe.

 

Thanks, that's cheaper than I expected. Will look into this soon!

 

I gave up trying to keep values up to date in my records. It's a never ending process. The current value will only be important if I have a loss, plan to sell or send coins in for grading.

 

I finally decided to select a price guide and go with that.
Since all my coins are slabbed that made the grading part easy; it's already done.

What price guide did I select?
The PCGS Rare Coin Market Report, July/August 2019.
It has the most comprehensive listing I've found.

 

As good as any guide, IMO. Don't forget to adjust your valuation yearly at premium time (maybe every other year depending on how often you add/subtract to your collection)