Insurance - your experiences

Dustcanblue, it all depends on what kind of policy you buy. Replacement cost insurance is more expensive. An agent who is trying to get your business by keeping the cost down might not even tell you about it. Anyone with a big system and collection should have it. Crap  happens. I never thought about a lightening strike until it happened. Check your policy or call your agent.

In order to get records covered you have to have a list of every record you have. It helps to take a picture of the collection. Also take pictures of all your equipment. if you have replacement cost insurance they will pay for whatever it costs to replace those records with the same titles. If the records can not be replaced because they are out of print you get nothing.

Cleeds hit it on the money. You have to have specifically "replacement cost" insurance. What it costs now to replace the unit with a like unit. If you have just standard insurance they will cover the price of your equipment minus depreciation. If you paid say $5000 for a preamp ten years ago a "like" preamp today would cost $8000 which is what you would get with replacement cost insurance. With regular insurance you might get $3000. 
My Krell Ref 2 preamp got struck by lightening in 1996. I paid $4000 for it in around 1983. I gave the insurance company examples of like preamps and they gave me $11,000!