Last week we had a discussion about insurance. I said that I would double check my policy concerning a "Casino Memorabilia Collection" being included under the Personal Property section. Let me first say that all responses I believe are correct and I am not saying anything is wrong. However, I did find out some interesting facts that I will share and I hope some discussion on this important topic will come about. Sorry, I can't type, nor can I say what I want to say.
I will be talking about my insurance company State Farm and I'll be Quoting my Coverage. The discussion was very timely and involved three other people, the office manager, an insurance underwriter, and a friend of the office manager who seemed to know the policy's very well, maybe another agent.
Now the facts I learned.
1. My policy's special limits of liability is the type that tell you what is not covered. Some others tell you what is covered. Under my personal property coverage, two paragraphs are very close to what we are talking about. First paragraph under personal property special limits of liability a. I quote "$200.00 on money, coins and medals, including any of these that are part of a collection, and bank notes". Second paragraph under personal property special limits of liability f. I quote " $2,500.00 on stamps, trading cards and comic books, including any of these that are a part of a collection". None of these descriptions meet Casino Memorabilia or anything about what I collect.
Under this section I do have additional coverage for i. 10k computer equipment original is only 5k, and an additional 10k for jewelry.
2. Description, I've mentioned Casino Memorabilia a couple of times. It doesn't have to be those words, we were throwing out words that would fit our hobby's description and I shot that out. You need to stay away from the wording of the policy, when filling a claim. The office manager gave me several stupid examples of customers filling out claim forms that he had to help them with. Do not claim that you had 2,000 $5.00 chips stolen, value $10,000.00, the claims people would possibly question/deny that entry.
3. Documentation, I explained that I already had a database. They want pictures.
All three people I talked with agreed that I was covered, the agent later checked again with 2 other underwriters and all agreed. So by this time I feel confident that my collection is covered.
After all that, he said that he could cover my collection under a special policy (Don't remember the name). It had some advantages, would not be considered a loss under my policy,very low deductible, mysterious disappearance, no police report and some other things.
In closing, like it was said before, check with your own insurance company.