insuring vinyl

I think the odds of your renter's insurance underwriter "bumping" your personal property coverage to include the appraised value of your collection are somewhere between nil and less than that.

I'd suggest finding a broker that deals with Lloyd's of London and one of their peculiar offshoots (there are MANY)- they will literally insure anything for enough premium. You may find that since you will be paying dearly for the coverage, you may not need as detailed an appraisal as you might think-- they don't care if the stuff is worth what you say or not, you are going to pay for $XX of coverage on a pile of stuff, and if that stuff is stolen, burnt up, or destroyed, they are going to pay you ($XX - deductible). Provided you document that you have said stuff, you may need no appraiser. States differ here, too. Even if you need an appraisal, that will be subject to their approval, so step one is finding a company that will write the policy. Then you can make sure your appraisal meets their standards. They will also likely be able to help you find an appraiser, which may or may not be someone you want to use.

Might also check out Chubb Insurance. In any event, my advice would be leave your renter's insurance alone-- it's likely with a major low-cost carrier anyhow like State Farm, Farmers, whatever, and they won't be much help to you for this. Get a hold of a broker that has access to many different insurance companies and who wants to get your business. Be ready to get blown off a lot by lazy brokers who'd rather sell 3 homeowner's policies in the time it will take them to help you with this one thing.

In the end you might find that a good alarm system with smoke detectors and water sensors (yes, there's such a thing) and monitoring is cheaper insurance, albeit not foolproof.

I kind of went off (half cocked) in one direction after reading the original post.

AM_Dial: Keep in mind every policy is different, and if you haven't already, make sure you are interpreting your policy right, and /or got good advice on the fact that your particular policy will not cover your collection. Make sure you're not reading the exclusion for media that's not in your home-- an example follows:

PROPERTY NOT COVERED. We do not cover:
1. Articles separately described and specifically insured in this or other insurance;
2. Animals, birds or fish;
3. Motor vehicles or all other motorized land conveyances. This includes:
a. Their equipment and accessories; or
b. Electronic apparatus that is designed to be operated solely by use of the power from the electri-cal system of motor vehicles or all other motorized land conveyances. Electronic apparatus in-cludes:
1) Accessories or antennas; or
2) Tapes, wires, records, *discs* or other media;
for use with any electronic apparatus.



The exclusion of property described in 3.a. and 3.b. above applies only while the property is in or upon the vehicle or conveyance.

If you don't read that all carefully, you could think this applies in your home. In reality it's only if you have the media in your car.

If AM-Dial's renter's insurance policy excludes or limits vinyl /media at his house (limits is more likely), he might be able to get a policy from another company that won't (some renter's policies are better than others) but he's still going to have to look at policy provisions such as:

3. "Replacement cost" coverage shall not apply to property:
a. which by its inherent nature cannot be replaced.
b. not maintained in good or workable condition.
c. which at the time of loss is either obsolete or useless to the insured.

So, taking AM-Dial's example, with lots of rare vinyl that is not replaceable, the insurance company would only owe the actual cash value (replacement cost minus depreciation)** of the item. Now, with no appraisal, and no stated value on the collection on which you've been paying premiums, the adjuster is going to have a difficult time understanding why he/ she should be paying you $75 for an obsolete (to their way of thinking) piece of software. I'm sure they'd pay you the $15 for a new CD of your choosing. BUT, unless you've got either an appraisal or a stated value on that collection, you will have to fight on every single piece of irreplaceable vinyl you've got to receive decent value for it. That would be your duty in the event of a loss, not the insurance company's, BTW. Absent any documentation from you that the mint vinyl pressing of "We're a garage band" by "insert name of unknown local indie artist here" is really worth $75, you'd be in for a big fight. If these albums are from pressings as small as you say, where exactly would you locate one for sale that you could compare with to determine market value? How long would that take for your whole collection?

Even if your collection runs to mint pressings of more popular LPs, do you want to have to prove the value of each of those albums after the fire to get the $$ you deserve? Sure, you could find one for sale on Audiogon, watch what it sells for, print the page, repeat 1500 times-- but wouldn't you rather have a pre-negotiated value based on your own leisurely appraisal of your collection? Just a thought.

As always, you'll need to balance the expense of the insurance product with the benefit to you. Hopefully someone jumps in here with a good company for you to buy renter's insurance from.

**This problem is further compounded by most states' legal definition of actual cash value = replacement cost (in free market conditions) less depreciation. Read that replacement cost limitation again-- it says that if the item, by its inherent nature can't be replaced, we'll use the (non-existent?) replacement value less the (determined how?) depreciation to calculate its value. It's a catch-22. Add to that the issue of pre-loss condition-- after the fire how will the adjuster know if you had a pile of musty rummage sale garbage or truly mint LPs? Should the adjuster be expected to know that one album is worthless even in mint condition, while another is priceless in any playable condition? Assuming they don't, are they just going to take your word for it?

If I had a big collection of valuable vinyl on any full replacement cost homeowner's policy I've seen in WA, OR, or ID I would seriously consider separate insurance on that valuable collection. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

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.

Blw- did you see anything in Snake Farm's policy about what replacement cost does / does not apply to? You have any irreplaceable vinyl? Oh, and the state you're in definately matters- policies can differ a little or a lot from state to state. The core policies are often all the same (in many cases they come from ISO as stock policy forms)- where many differences are is in endorsements used to customize that policy for a given state, and in the issue date of the form. The endorsement will be at the back, and change a sentence or two here or there in your core policy to add, delete, or modify coverage. Some companies write on an old version of a policy form as long as they can if that's favorable to them.

Also, notice that all the "my policy covers me" answers thus far have been homeowner's policies, which are more standardized than renter's policies, AND these answers assume replacement cost is not in dispute with the claims staff. The good thing is you are all looking and now you know what you've got.