insuring vinyl

Thanks, everyone, for all the excellent advice so far. I did spend the evening perusing my renter's policy, and Pmkalby is correct--there is no mention of any sort of limit or lack of coverage to sound recordings except in the exclusion cited about recordings on a motor vehicle. So perhaps the agent I spoke to has incorrect info.

It's heartening to hear that some others have had decent luck getting agents to increase limits. I think I'll visit the local Met agent tomorrow (my wife and I qualify for group rate insurance through her employer, so we haven't really dealt with anyone in person). If that doesn't work perhaps I'll switch the policy to State Farm! USAA doesn't look like an option for the reasons Lugnut cited.

I think Pmkalby's second post brings up an interesting (and frightening) point about what happens in the event a claim is necessary--how to prove value, condition, etc. I actually have catalogued every single record in my collection (per the advice of a previous insurance agent), but I agree that condition and value are difficult if not impossible to document, and anyway as we all know used vinyl is a volatile market in a lot of ways--basically it's worth what someone is or isn't willing to pay for it. And certainly we've all bought valuable records for next to nothing because the seller didn't know the value.

I once sold some of my records to a guy who'd lost all of his in a house fire. He was reassembling his collection, bit by bit, with the insurance settlement money. This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night.

Joshua

Our 12,000 plus record collection is covered by our Home Owners insurance. 5 years ago we had a ice cube maker water valve that frooze in the open condition and flooded a section of our basement. The insurance appraiser viewed the damage which included about a 12 inch wide stack of 1950's to 60's jazz. The appraiser saw that I was a serious collector, had several jazz price books around and asked me what the records were worth. I gave an honest appraisal and the check was sent to us for the total damage along with a detail for each loss within a few days. We still have the same insurance conmpany and our rates have not increased more than 2% since.

Just my experience,
Brian

AM_dial: Glad you found out you got bad advice. You hopefully also learned a valuable lesson: agents don't always know about claims. It's always amazed me that the same agent that would laugh his rear off if I tried to sell insurance, thinks nothing of trying to advise people regarding claims...

BrianW- glad you had a good experience- that is the way claims are supposed to work. Just keep in mind that if you change one thing in that experience, it could have been very frustrating for you.

Possible change #1: Grumpy, inept, or just plain burnt out adjuster. There are 2 of these for every competent, courteous and professional one at some companies.

Possible change #2: Instead of a little water leak, you come home from work to find a smoking hole in the ground where your house once was. Now demonstrate the quality of your collection.

Possible change #3: Insurance company is struggling financially. Stock prices are down. They're trying to pretty up the balance sheets for a possible purchase by another company. New claims manager comes in and starts hammering staff adjusters to reduce loss ratios. Suddenly people aren't so willing to see your side of things.

Just food for thought.

Someone mentioned taking lots of pictures, and that is excellent advice. Take a ton of digital pics of your gear, your room, your software (take LPs out of the sleeves to show condition)-- put that CD-ROM in a safe deposit box, at your mom's house, or in your desk drawer at the office. At least then you'll only have to worry about replaceability, not proving you had the stuff, or its condition.

Sorry for being long winded.

I just checked my homeowner's policy with State Farm (I'm in Virginia if it matters). It does cover both my electronics and the collections. I regularly file a CD of photos with my insurance agent, and perhaps I will take a few of the important items in the collection. I file the CD regularly becuase I'm a little spooked by recent discourse in the papers about CDRs having less than archival duration. Fortunately they're now dirt cheap and sending one to my sister 100 miles away and one to my insurance agent is not an interesting expense. (My tax returns, quicken backups, and some other stuff go up there too.)

Just a quick follow-up to my earlier posts: I spoke to a local agent who advised me that, while my collection is covered for replacement value as part of my renter's policy (as personal property), I should still get the collection professionally appraised and then attach a rider to the policy for it. Her brother, apparently, is an Elvis collector (how strange to hear an insurance agent talk about "clear blue vinyl LPs"!) and bought a special rider because a) if the record turns out to be irreplaceable (say you can't find one for sale), you won't get any money for it, and b) you'll only get replacement value, not collectible value. With a rider, according to this agent, I'd be paid the full value of the collection as determined by the appraiser, whether or not I can replace every record in it. Given the investment my own collection represents, this sounds (to me, at least) like a better idea than simply bumping up the amount of total coverage I buy. Just thought some of you might be interested in this. Thanks again for all the responses.

Joshua