At what point do you insure your cards?

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I think a lot about this issue living in an area prone to earthquakes and having lost my home in 1994 to the Northridge Earthquake. It can happen to you; lots of fires occur all over the place, it isn't just a burglar that can take out your cards. If you see your cards as "funny money" and you don't really care what they are worth, or if you don't care if they go down with the ship when the house burns down, don't insure. The insurance isn't particularly expensive, though, and if you have a sizable collection or a low tolerance for risk, insure them for the peace of mind it brings. If you have some items that it would kill you to lose, put them in a safe deposit box, or maybe even a couple of them at different locations.

As far as inventory, proof, etc., goes, I can speak from a good deal of experience fighting property loss claims with a variety of insurers for my clients. The first thing to understand is that insurers are the only businesses in the world that exist for the sole purpose of seeing if they can breach the contract (the insurance policy) by not doing what they said they would do when they are called on to perform. The last thing an insurer wants its people to do is pay claims at full value as specified by the insured. I know whoever works for insurers will differ on this, but we all intuitively and experientially know better--an insurer's best day is the day it avoids paying a valid claim, and an insurance company attorney's best day is the day he or she beats an insured out of a valid claim, because that's how insurer profits increase. Take that as your initial perspective on how a claim will be handled if you are unfortunate enough to have a loss and you can start preparing now, with an eye towards presenting such a well organized, well documented claim that if it is denied your attorney will be able to file a killer bad faith case against the insurer.

Your first task is to inventory your collection. Remember, if you don't care enough about your cards to inventory them, you should not expect the insurer (who makes money not paying claims) to pay a substantial claim on faith. If you actively collect, you already very likely have a highly accurate, detailed inventory of your cards: your checklists. Even if you just check off cards from your sets on a scrap of paper, that data is a working list of what you have. If not, you can easily create an inventory using the Standard Catalog. Just go through it checking off what you have. That gives you at least a starting point. If you are good with it, a spreadsheet program like Excel is fantastic. I would checklist by set, name and condition, at the minimum. If you have your cards in slabs, note the cert #s.

If you are the slabber of many of your cards, you have another ready-made inventorying resource. SGC (I don't know PSA but I assume that they do it too) has a downloadable, printable record of your submissions going back years. That record will provide ID of the cards, grade and the cert number (the invoice # plus the designated card #). If you've slabbed a lot of your collection and haven't inventoried it, get online with SGC and use the submission status checking tool to pull up and print/download old invoices.

Finally, a picture is worth a thousand words, especially in front of a jury. I scan every card I receive before I put the card away. It takes virtually no time to do it unless you are receiving hundreds of cards a week. When I trade or sell a card, I delete the scan, which also takes next to no time. Use a high resolution for the scans so condition can be ascertained on raw cards. Here's a tip: if you have lots of cards in 4 or 9 pocket sheets, scan the sheets whole and don't worry if it isn't pretty. Believe me, no insurer will be stupid enough to deny a claim substantiated with images of your significant cards, especially in slabs with certs traceable to you on them.

Finally, if you are starting from scratch, my suggestion is not to allow a seemingly large project overwhelm you. Knock off one set a weekend, or one album a weekend. Instead of reading the paper or watching the pregame show, take half an hour every Sunday morning to sit at the computer and scan stuff that you did not scan when you bought it.