My in-laws visited over the holiday this year, and one of the lectures that we got was on insurance. Apparently they want to make sure that we're completely covered in case of disaster. There's a four-year-old thread that touches on adding your collection to your homeowner's insurance, but it's quite brief. I was just wondering if any among you has done this, and through what hoops you had to jump? It was suggested that since, for example I've got a lot of books, that the insurance company might say "You have an unusual amount of books. We doubt that you had as many as you claim," so I'd have to provide photographs of all of them. Will I really need to photograph all my Magic cards? And if I were to have them professionally appraised (by whom?), won't that be obsolete quickly, since card values (and the contents of the collection) change frequently? What about truly irreplaceable stuff? I have a lot of sketches that various artists have done for me over the years. Many of those artists no longer have time to do custom sketches, and some are unfortunately no longer with us.
TLDR; does anyone have any advice about insuring a paper collection? Or (and this would be really helpful) experience in collecting insurance on a damaged/stolen collection?
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I've been planning to get an insurance also, so I'm also interested in replies. One advice I have is to take a video of your collection. It's much easier than to photograph everything. Nowadays even cell phone cameras are good enough to get solid quality. Just flip over binder pages and get an overview. General lists like set of beta duals will not be enough for big ticket items, but full foil set of Modern Masters should be, if I understand correctly.
One thing I did was to make a general list of big ticket items I have, labeled it ICE MtG and stored it with my finance and tax papers and listed the collection in broad strokes with values, so if anything happens, my wife will not throw them away or sell away at a bargain prices. I got this idea from various other older players, who also have spouses who don't know how valuable the collections are. (There's surprisingly many of us out there...)
The good thing about making this list was that I got a much better idea how valuable some parts of my collection are and forced me to admit that I propably need an insurance for some things. It's surprising how valuable even a collection of promotional basic lands collected for 20 years can get.
There are a couple more threads on this on MTGS, reddit, motl too for more references btw.
2 good online insurance sources: Collectinsure.com, TheFia.com. I've asked for quotes from multiple home insurance vendors (as recently as winter '16) but the prices were pretty crazy.
In the end I went with CI (cheapest option for my usage), they don't require an independent third-party appraisal and I made several videos for my collection. In addition to this, I have copies of my collection regularly updated on various online sites as well as a workbook documenting all changes to the collection for audit purposes.
There are a couple more threads on this on MTGS, reddit, motl too for more references btw.
2 good online insurance sources: Collectinsure.com, TheFia.com. I've asked for quotes from multiple home insurance vendors (as recently as winter '16) but the prices were pretty crazy.
In the end I went with CI (cheapest option for my usage), they don't require an independent third-party appraisal and I made several videos for my collection. In addition to this, I have copies of my collection regularly updated on various online sites as well as a workbook documenting all changes to the collection for audit purposes.
Thanks, Dresden. I hope you don't mind me asking some personal questions, but I'm trying to get a better idea of how things work. I'd be happy to discuss this over PM if you'd rather not talk about your financial situation on an open internet forum. Or you can tell me you just don't want to get into specifics and that's obviously fine too.
Do you already have homeowner's insurance? Do you value your collection at more than your house? I can understand that it might be expensive if your collection is all that you're insuring, but my read of the situation is that since my collection is worth less than my house, it'd just be considered "personal goods", and part of the contents of said house. I know that my homeowner's insurance covers me for some value of possessions - it's not just the cost of the house - so that might be covered. I have to find that out. I don't really own anything expensive except for some Magic cards. How did you end up picking a value for your collection? Did you make a spreadsheet and add up TCGMid prices? How fine did you go? Down to $5 cards? I presume there was some fudge factor?
If you have links to some of the other threads (I searched, but didn't find anything of substance), I'd love to see them as well.
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I;m curious to see the advice in this thread. My own collection is about $25,000 TCG Low, so if I went by mid I'd wager it's at least 30K. AFAIK its not covered under my HO policy, although I've never mentioned it to them specifically. Not necessarily for insurance purposes, but I keep a spreadsheet of all cards I own worth $50 or more and update it every 3 months. That list is about 130 cards long and is worth about $15,000, so 60% of my total collections value lies in just 130 cards.
My friend had his cards insured somehow, but if it was, I don't know how he did it since he was living with his parents (possibly under his parents policy?). Anyway he took his collection to a massive tourney, like a GP or something, and the whole thing, valued at 28 grand got stolen. He says he recovered almost the full amount though from insurance.
@KnickM - Yes on homeowner's insurance. However I've found that homeowner's insurance will not cover your mtg collection, at least not up to the amounts you must be inquiring about if you're thinking about this. As for collection value - I actually have a list of most of the cards in my collection, even the ones less than $1 and manage it with pricing software. Deckbox or other apps out there can do this as well, I believe. The difficulty was in typing out all those cards to begin with, but managing it has been not too bad. It's also helped that a large portion of my collection are complete sets, which makes for much, much simpler card management.
Thanks Dresden, I've read few of those, but not all. Usually most of the threads are US centric, so us poor foreigners need to read them with that in mind. I know that I could get a rider attached to my homeowner's insurence, that would cover my collection in similar way as an art collection, but unless you find a person, who knows something about CCG's, you can expect some raised eyebrows at playing with the cards. Also some companies will not cover any theft that happens if the most expensive cards are not inside a safe, so events need an different insurance. (Card stores often have one. All their sales stock is insured for a set amount of 'trips' to non-local events where they are ste up as dealers.)
For me the biggest hurdle to cross is the amount of collection bookkeeping. I have maybe 7k cards over 1$, including boxes of bulk alpha, AQ, Lg, beta, promos, P3K and ST99 commons (all AN cards are in one large binder) on top of full sets. Listing and grading all of them is a huge workload and propably would make my collection seem much more valuable than it is in reality, as selling random semi-expensive commons is not that easy thing and condition is really important to the value.
But grading and listing 7k cards is something I would try to avoid if at all possible, or something I would need to tackle at stages, when I built my 4x common sets for all expansions (this was at 2003 I think) it took me a week, 9 binders and 300 binder pages. It also left me with 250+ pounds (127 kilos) of bulk commons, which I sold to a local store... Took me four trips and them over a year to sell all of them forward.
I actually have some of set lists done (for alpha and beta), but all need updating and all prices need to be also rechecked. Getting good prices for some of the older cards is also a chore, as there usually is just one or two nm copies availlable, and even one wonky price (1300$ for a graded alpha Gauntlet of Might) can really change the average price and italian Legends cards affect those prices, etc. So you really need to know how the prices are collected for any software. Also graded, signed, etc cards need to be handled seperately.
One reason I would love to just video my binders is that I have 60 of them currently... and I know. First world problems here.
Yes, that's why I went with CI. They cover the cards you bring with you to play with at events (i.e. cards not in a safe)!
On book-keeping, unfortunately this is unavoidable. The good news is that you don't necessarily need to grade the cards - just assume an average condition throughout and maybe list a few of the highest-$ graded ones. Pricing for signed cards can be assumed as SP, as that's what they are generally sold for, on an individual basis anyway
Once you have the list of cards, getting and maintaining prices on them is an automated process if you're using a good app to store your collection.
What software do people recommend to store a collection on if I want a written record with a list of values?
Something that will automagically update prices, preferably. I use Google Docs to list my decks and my more valuable cards, but I'd have to manually add all the values, and keep them updated, so that seems like a bad call.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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TLDR; does anyone have any advice about insuring a paper collection? Or (and this would be really helpful) experience in collecting insurance on a damaged/stolen collection?
One thing I did was to make a general list of big ticket items I have, labeled it ICE MtG and stored it with my finance and tax papers and listed the collection in broad strokes with values, so if anything happens, my wife will not throw them away or sell away at a bargain prices. I got this idea from various other older players, who also have spouses who don't know how valuable the collections are. (There's surprisingly many of us out there...)
The good thing about making this list was that I got a much better idea how valuable some parts of my collection are and forced me to admit that I propably need an insurance for some things. It's surprising how valuable even a collection of promotional basic lands collected for 20 years can get.
Set to default
2 good online insurance sources: Collectinsure.com, TheFia.com. I've asked for quotes from multiple home insurance vendors (as recently as winter '16) but the prices were pretty crazy.
In the end I went with CI (cheapest option for my usage), they don't require an independent third-party appraisal and I made several videos for my collection. In addition to this, I have copies of my collection regularly updated on various online sites as well as a workbook documenting all changes to the collection for audit purposes.
Thanks, Dresden. I hope you don't mind me asking some personal questions, but I'm trying to get a better idea of how things work. I'd be happy to discuss this over PM if you'd rather not talk about your financial situation on an open internet forum. Or you can tell me you just don't want to get into specifics and that's obviously fine too.
Do you already have homeowner's insurance? Do you value your collection at more than your house? I can understand that it might be expensive if your collection is all that you're insuring, but my read of the situation is that since my collection is worth less than my house, it'd just be considered "personal goods", and part of the contents of said house. I know that my homeowner's insurance covers me for some value of possessions - it's not just the cost of the house - so that might be covered. I have to find that out. I don't really own anything expensive except for some Magic cards. How did you end up picking a value for your collection? Did you make a spreadsheet and add up TCGMid prices? How fine did you go? Down to $5 cards? I presume there was some fudge factor?
If you have links to some of the other threads (I searched, but didn't find anything of substance), I'd love to see them as well.
My friend had his cards insured somehow, but if it was, I don't know how he did it since he was living with his parents (possibly under his parents policy?). Anyway he took his collection to a massive tourney, like a GP or something, and the whole thing, valued at 28 grand got stolen. He says he recovered almost the full amount though from insurance.
Some external reading - there's links to other articles in there from other sites.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?22800-Insuring-My-Collection-Advice
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/329573-insuring-ones-cards
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/325430-insuring-your-collection
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/278k6u/has_anybody_insured_their_mtg_collections_can_you/
For me the biggest hurdle to cross is the amount of collection bookkeeping. I have maybe 7k cards over 1$, including boxes of bulk alpha, AQ, Lg, beta, promos, P3K and ST99 commons (all AN cards are in one large binder) on top of full sets. Listing and grading all of them is a huge workload and propably would make my collection seem much more valuable than it is in reality, as selling random semi-expensive commons is not that easy thing and condition is really important to the value.
But grading and listing 7k cards is something I would try to avoid if at all possible, or something I would need to tackle at stages, when I built my 4x common sets for all expansions (this was at 2003 I think) it took me a week, 9 binders and 300 binder pages. It also left me with 250+ pounds (127 kilos) of bulk commons, which I sold to a local store... Took me four trips and them over a year to sell all of them forward.
I actually have some of set lists done (for alpha and beta), but all need updating and all prices need to be also rechecked. Getting good prices for some of the older cards is also a chore, as there usually is just one or two nm copies availlable, and even one wonky price (1300$ for a graded alpha Gauntlet of Might) can really change the average price and italian Legends cards affect those prices, etc. So you really need to know how the prices are collected for any software. Also graded, signed, etc cards need to be handled seperately.
One reason I would love to just video my binders is that I have 60 of them currently... and I know. First world problems here.
Set to default
Yes, that's why I went with CI. They cover the cards you bring with you to play with at events (i.e. cards not in a safe)!
On book-keeping, unfortunately this is unavoidable. The good news is that you don't necessarily need to grade the cards - just assume an average condition throughout and maybe list a few of the highest-$ graded ones. Pricing for signed cards can be assumed as SP, as that's what they are generally sold for, on an individual basis anyway
Once you have the list of cards, getting and maintaining prices on them is an automated process if you're using a good app to store your collection.
Something that will automagically update prices, preferably. I use Google Docs to list my decks and my more valuable cards, but I'd have to manually add all the values, and keep them updated, so that seems like a bad call.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-software/337213-the-vault-v0-11a-15th-nov-2015-deck-collection
Also if you store your collection on deckbox, that should update as well.