Is your doll insured?

No, I probably should, although I think our home owner's insurance covers it. I mean, it doesn't cover collectibles, but they give us so much money to cover furniture and appliances, we don't have that much :P So we'd have more than enough left over to cover the dolls if something happens...

 

My house insurance covers it, but my insurance is done really weirdly anyway, so they kind of have their own insurance. Actually, I'm tempted to get them their own insurance since I'm moving between homes so often it's just hectic! Even my own flat is temporary accomodation! So many accidents can happen when you're constantly on the move...... *paranoia sets in*

 

Yep, on our home insurance We had to get pretty heavy home insurance since we live near a river (the cost goes up! Floods and such, etc.) and we work from home and have costly equipment and stuff.

 

In case anyone else reads long threads backwards, like I do, I thought I would post this updated information.
There was quite a bit of discussion earlier in the thread about collectinsure and how they did not cover dolls. They do now- I checked the website.
http://www.collectinsure.com/covered.html

The thing to do would be to talk to your insurance agent and see exactly what is covered in your homeowners/renters insurance. Your dolls might be covered already, or you may be able to add them on their own rider. However, some policies specifically exclude things like collections (or if you have extensive photography equipment, for instance).

 

My my home insurance applies on my inventory, so that includes Shinta.

 

I discovered recently that my homeowners insurance can't be increased to cover my doll collection. They'd be more than happy to set up collector's insurance....but I have to get them appraised first. For those of you who have collector's insurance, how did you get them appraised? Any tips?

FWIW they're still covered under our general house insurance. However, that money is meant to cover everything in the house, not just my dolls. I'd rather have a bit of money dedicated to replacing them, so the general house insurance can be used on everything else.

 

I'm pretty sure my dolls would be covered by my renter's insurance in the event of a natural disaster. I should probably look into that though.

 

I sat down the other day and tyook pictures of all my dolls (not inclding the 1/6th variety) and figured up what I had spent on them. It added up to about $10,000! When I ttried to have hem insured by our home owners insurance they said I have to hav them appraisd to be covere or receipts for every doll. Some of my dolls are over 10 yrs old so of course I don't have that. Has anyone else tried to do this and have any suggestions?


I have Puki's, Volks dolls and various cat ball joint dolls. I wonder, would it do any good to write the companies, like Volks and ask them to provide something in writing with prices the dolls were originally sold at? that is a lot of money to have go up in a fire; even tho most are limited editions and couldn't be replaced anyway.

Thanks, Cat

 

Document, document, document. Go to the websites and print pictures of the pages with the prices on them. Go to the marketplace and find owners selling similar dolls. Go to ebay and find the same.

THEN go to a specialty insurer. Search "collectibles insurance" in Google and find someone who issues policies precisely for collectibles. They will tell you what (if anything) more you need in documentation.

It always pays to go with a specialist insurer when you are talking about something "not everyone" has. For instance, when we had a Lotus sports car, we did not insure it with our regular car insurance company. We went with a specialist, since it was seldom driven, except to car shows, and we got a rate that was half that our regular insurer offered and we had extra things added that the regular insurer could not.

 

Thanks that was very helpful indeed . I will certainly print out stuff with all the info about the dolls I own, cause we are talking about a lot of money.

 

Since I just went through this process I have a few more tips:

1. Make sure you request an appraisal of the dolls with all their stuff. For example, my reason for getting them assessed is listed as "Insurance - Require an appraisal on the doll including the outfit and accessories". That includes eyes, jewelry, clothing, etc.

2. Try to pair the outfits/accessories up with each doll. That way you don't have to submit another listing for doll clothes. For example, I have 1-2 outfits from Dollmore that only Ostrich wears. So they were added to her listing. Have outfits that are shared? Just pick one doll to list them with.

3. If you take pictures make sure you add these outfits to your pictures too. I ended up laying them out in front of their associated doll.

For those of you who don't want to get them assessed (it costs money) but want some form of protection:

1. Take detailed pictures of each doll, including outfits and accessories. Keep the high-res photos (don't shrink them).
2. Save all those pictures on your hard drive.
3. Burn them to a CD-R, not a CD-RW. RW = Re-Writable, and this is for insurance purposes.
4. Label the disk something like "doll collection" with the current date. Keep the disk somewhere safe. Preferably somewhere fireproof, or in a safety deposit box.

That way if, say, your house burns down, you still have a complete record of your collection. Plus it's cheap to do. You can buy a pack of CDs for a few bucks, and you can use whatever camera you have lying around. Need to update your collection? If most of your collection has stayed the same, you can reuse the pictures on your hard drive. Just add/modify/delete whatever you need and burn to another CD-R.

Keep in mind if your house burns down the money to replace your collection will come out of your house insurance. So in catsy's case she'll have $10,000 less to replace her books, clothing, furniture, etc.

 

Are you guys insuring just your dolls or are you insuring both dolls and limited clothing?

 

Yup, we have insurance for dolls as a part of household. It just covers a sum of money, so you dont have to tell what actually is there. If something bad happens you just have to prove the price of items were damaged.
I think making a separate insurance for dolls only, is abit too much for our scale.

 

Hi Catsy!
I actually work at an insurance company and might be able to help ya.
Not sure what kind of insurance you have but instead of putting them under your Home Owners insurance coverage, look into a separate coverage for them. I have mine on a separate coverage called "Scheduled Personal Property"(they are listed as Fine Arts). A lot of insurance campanies have this, you just have to request it.
The reason your insurance agent maybe requiring you get an appraisal is because of the $10,000 sum. Talk to your agent and see about scheduled coverage. This goes by the individual price of each doll and each doll is insured separately for that price. Usually anything $3,000+ for a single item requires an appraisal, this is why if your getting cover for your collection as a whole you'll need an appraisal to get coverage.
I actually recommend you get coverage PER doll as opposed to as a collection. Insuring a collection can get tricky and should only one doll get damaged theres all kinds of rules attached as to how thats reimbursed, not to meantion you'd have to get your collection appraised again and apprasied every few years. When you insure per doll should anything happen to any of them you'd be reimbursed in no time cause they'd go "Ok, you had a Volks blah blah blah insured for $600, it was broke/stolen/whatever. Heres your reimbursment."
Also, Breakage...get it when you insure your dolls, it doesn't cost but a few cents more and you never know what can happen.
Also for people who have their dolls covered under Home Owners and Renters, read your endorsements, there are some that say if your property is lost/stolen/or broke outside of the specified/agreed upon area (your house) you will NOT be covered. For example, if you take 4 dolls to a doll show and 3 are stolen, you may not be reimbursed because some Home Owners and Renters do not cover that because the dolls were not IN the home when they were stolen.
I hope that helps some!

 

Also here is a tip:

Get a gmail account. Call it "CatsyDollArchives" or whatever you want to call it. When you do your pictures, mail them to that gmail account. Now you have a full archive of your dolls and outfits that you can access from literally anywhere (including the insurance agent's office). When you sell a doll or add a doll or an outfit it will be easy to add to the archive.

 

I was actually wondering about this this morning. I only have two dolls but with the exchange rates and everything it adds up to a lot of money and it'd really suck if anything happened to them and I wasn't covered.
I'll have to talk to my parents and see if there's anything I can do for them.

 

Both! Any limited clothing was specifically listed with the doll. For example, "LE Soom Glati. Has default face-up and LE Glati outfit."

gwenithcoy - Huh. Requesting each doll get appraised is kinda interesting because my insurance company was only interested in the grand total. I don't think they cared much about how much each doll was appraised for. But all I had were the individual appraisals, so I added those up and faxed them copies. (FWIW they had a hard time finding the "dolls" category in their system too. They did eventually find it under Fine Arts. Now they're trying to look for the LE Books category. )

 

Hi there,

I know this sounds kind of unnecessary but that's what I hope to figure out.
Since I'm covered by all kinds of insurance recently I'm thinking of buying insurance for my dolls.But the agent got totally confused about the price I declared. He just don't know why some of them worth more than $2000 each. I told him that are the price on ebay and Y!JA but he need "appraisal value from an approved valuer" as what he said.
Does anyone have any idea about how to find a valuer to define doll values? Anyone ever buy an insurance covering LE dolls and manage to define their value MORE than the original value showed on their company website?
Lots of thanks

 

What I did was to copy marketplace threads of both dolls for sale and those sold to show my insurance company what the dolls where currently worth.

I imagine you will be hard pressed to find an appraiser that knows enough about BJDs to help you out... I hope you find someone. If your company is not willing to work with you on foreign based niche artworks, I am sure some other company will be more than willing to take your money... er... help you out.

 

it is very intresting topic , i keep eyes on it ,to try learn from all of you about all concerns for dolls