contents insurance

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Richard S.
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contents insurance

Post by Richard S. »

Can I ask what people’s experiences are about adding their collection onto their contents insurance? Do you declare the value? Will photos do or do you need a long list of every comic in your collection (and how much you paid for it)? Do the insurer send someone around? How much did it bump up your annual premium etc.? Any pointers really

Conscious that I have never done this which is daft as it would cost me a lot to replace my collection.
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colcool007
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Re: contents insurance

Post by colcool007 »

Richard, you need to give them a total value of the collection and only the value of set items that are over their set limit (as in issue 1 of Commando in mint condition as that can be valued at £500 plus) as in the case of insuring jewellery. My contents comes in at £25k for my collection with only my original artwork being individually mentioned as one item is worth over £200. So check with your insurers to see what they want.

I must admit when I saw the title of the thread, I thought it was spam to be deleted! :lol:
I started to say something sensible but my parents took over my brain!

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ISPYSHHHGUY
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Re: contents insurance

Post by ISPYSHHHGUY »

Wow, 25, 000 pounds worth of comics, Col: that's more than I paid for my house!

[A long time ago, admittedly]...........

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colcool007
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Re: contents insurance

Post by colcool007 »

It is scary how they add up Rab!. When i first did it, I thought I was coming in at around the £5k mark. When it went over the £10k I was having kittens!
I started to say something sensible but my parents took over my brain!

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ISPYSHHHGUY
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Re: contents insurance

Post by ISPYSHHHGUY »

:D : :D D :D :D

big bad bri
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Re: contents insurance

Post by big bad bri »

But how do you value your collection as i have 1000's comics many of which are priceless to me & im sure it would cost me a whole lot more than £25.000 to replace & yourself colcool 007 as im sure you have have a much more extensive older collection than me & many others on here, at least,how would insurer's value them as i'm sure many many people don't have a clue how much money they paid in total & if you was to pay the equivalent value in today's money compared to what some of you paid in the 70s & 80s for example ,the total would be much more.plus the fact many comics are irreplaceable now like how would you go about buying a near complete run of Whoopee nowadays with out trawling ebay for years probably.

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colcool007
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Re: contents insurance

Post by colcool007 »

I valued the collection in a simplistic manner. Easy to get hold of comics got an averaged price ie 1970's/80's Victors can be picked up at £1 each, but if you add in P&P, then you look at £2 or more per issue as the value is the total price you pay. It doesn't matter how often an issue comes up for sale, it's the average value that is the important thing here.

So for my incomplete collection of Victor where I am missing roughly 50 issues then I am looking at £3k right there, without even adding in the additional value of the 1960's issues. Or the annuals. Or the Summer Specials.

And as you can see, once you start to add in other comics, the value can suddenly grow far beyond what you expect it to be.

As to how insurers value them, then they either get in a comic specialist to evaluate the realism of your figures and adjust your premiums or they take you at face value, gouge you for the premiums for the value you have given them and then scream blue murder when you try to claim!

Make sure that flooding through either accidental damage or natural disaster is high on the list of things that you can claim for!
I started to say something sensible but my parents took over my brain!

Phoenix
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Re: contents insurance

Post by Phoenix »

colcool007 wrote:I valued the collection in a simplistic manner. Easy to get hold of comics got an averaged price ie 1970's/80's Victors can be picked up at £1 each, but if you add in P&P, then you look at £2 or more per issue as the value is the total price you pay.
Too simplistic I would suggest, Colin. No insurance company is going to give you twice the cost of replacing every single comic in your collection. If one of your issues of The Victor is worth £1, as you say, and the current replacement cost is £1, then you cannot expect to receive more than £1 to replace it. How you choose to go about replacing it is your business, not the insurance company's. They are not a cash cow. You do make a very important point though about the importance of people reaching an honest valuation of their collections, and insuring them for that figure. Having the figure independently checked by a comics specialist is also a good idea because it will give your valuation legitimacy, and you should then get paid out a decent percentage of the maximum that you have insured them for. If people undervalue their collections to make their premiums more manageable, the chances are high that their insurance company will reduce their liability by a significant percentage for all losses (furniture, hi-fi, 50'' 3D plasma television, curtains, carpets, clothes, bedding, books, pieces of original artwork etc.) They may well then feel shafted, but it will serve them right because it will have been their fault in the first place.

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colcool007
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Re: contents insurance

Post by colcool007 »

But you actually pay at least £3.70 to replace a single issue if you look at the cost of the actual replacement if you include the value of the item plus the cost of retrieving it. Which is why I estimated the cost of an issue at £2 per issue. However, this is the sort of thing you should iron out with your insurer at the earliest possible opportunity as many will fight tooth and nail before they pay out a single penny.

And the replacment value is such a variable as I have seen sellers charging £5 an issue for antique comics.... So it is always going to be a compromise between your evaluation and the insurers.

And as to reducing the value to make the premiums more manageable, that is a whole other discussion. I never try to inflate nor deflate the value of items as the insurance company will use it as an excuse to reduce their payments by that percentage for any claim.
I started to say something sensible but my parents took over my brain!

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