Insuring Your Vinyl Collection and Equipment

Why insure your vinyl collection?
It has taken me nearly 60 years to build mine and I don't have another 60 years to rebuild it.
What use is money to replace art?

Why would I want the insurance company to give me $35,000 to replace all my records?  Huh.  Good question.  The answer to the question doesn't have much to do with whether I would actually replace them all or not, because I couldn't.

Thanks for bringing this up.  I sent our insurance company a spreadsheet of all my equipment, the model and serial numbers and the "replacement cost", so they would have it in their records.  The strange thing with that was that our agent didn't think they'd cover my wiring (interconnects and speaker wires), she was stunned to see how much those cost.

My system has all digital sources.  Over the years I've recorded all my purchased music (CDs and downloads) onto an external hard drive.  That drive gets regularly backed up to two different cloud accounts (Google and Carbonite) and copied to an identical external hard drive, which lives in our fire safe.  I can't imagine how long it would take to rebuild the library on that drive, hence my "over the top" backup strategy.

On a home owners policy if you want coverage above and beyond you have to add scheduled coverage. This is a rider that you would list your album’s on and pay an additional premium for the coverage. Your equipment is going to be covered under the standard furnishing within dwelling schedule. Insurance companies will insure almost anything if you want to pay for it. Just be aware that multiple petty claims will lead to your coverage being dropped. Think of your home owners policy as Catastrophic coverage only.

I agree with many here.  One must really read their insurance policy to see exactly what is covered and what isn't covered.  The insurance companies are not stupid.  They know exactly what they are doing.  they don't want to pay out anything if they can avoid it.  Their job is to separate you from your money.  period.

so, a rider would possibly be required.

However, be aware, that to insure certain items, not originally covered under your homeowner's or renters policy, you may have to get each and every item professionally appraised and valued.  Comic books, art, you name it. 

but, I worked with the Emergency Operations Organization for years and we were taught that after disasters, many people found that their could not get paid from their insurance company for one really important reason.  They had no evidence that they actually remembered or even owned the items they said were lost.

So the recommendations from the insurance companies were to make sure items were listed as covered under the insurance policy and second, take pictures and make list of everything.  Clothes, furniture, art, music equipment, etc.  keep those pictures and list somewhere safe.  Think about it.  You lose your home in a fire.  and you lose all of your possessions.  Do you honestly think you can actually remember each and every item  you lost?  I know I won't.  I go around my home with a camera and take photos, write lists, keep receipts, etc. 

Even then, the insurance  company rep will do whatever they can to deny your claims.  But, at least you have documentation to back up your claim.

be safe. 

enjoy 

My insurance company told me that I only had to declare it if any one component was over their specified valuables limit and since the turntable arm and cartridge are taken as separate items my equipment as separates fall below their limit, don't know if that helps, I'm in the UK so don't know what happens in other countries.