When should I schedule my jewelry and valuables?

Your sweetheart gave you a shiny and expensive expression of devotion for Valentine’s Day.  To you it’s priceless; to your insurance company, it’s value and the probability of loss has been analyzed and parsed down to a single numerical quantification.

Homeowners insurance policies provide a limit on your personal property, usually 70 or 75% of your dwelling valuation.  However, carriers typically place special limits on certain types of personal property.  These are the details of which you need to be aware.

Some typical categories subject to special limits may be:

• Animals, birds, and fish
• Money, travelers checks, bank notes, bullion, precious bulk metals
• Sports memorabilia
• Securities, deeds, notes, passports, stamps
• Trailers and campers
• Boats and motors
• Manuscripts
• Business personal property
• Firearms
• Jewelry and furs
• Silverware

These special limits are a fraction of your policy limit on personal property, perhaps $1,000 to $5,000.  And some only apply to theft of the items, usually jewelry, firearms, silverware, and sports memorabilia.  There is usually a per item limit and a per loss or per collection limit.  Every carrier is slightly different in how they handle special limits.

If you have any valuable collections that may exceed the special limits of your policy, you should consider scheduling them on your policy or even purchasing a separate “Inland Marine” policy to cover them.  Both of these solutions allow you to state the value of your precious items and cover them at full value, for an additional premium.

If you already have your jewelry scheduled, but it’s been a few years since it was appraised, you may want to get a fresh appraisal.  Because of the recent increases in prices of gold, platinum and other precious metals, jewelry values have also gone up.  You may find your wedding and engagement rings are now undervalued.