Beyond Standard Coverage: Insuring Your Valuable Collections

Are High Value Items Covered Under Standard Policies?

Do you know what's actually covered under your homeowner's insurance policy? Many homeowners are shocked to discover that their most treasured possessions—from vintage guitars and family heirlooms to fine jewelry and artwork—may have little to no protection under standard coverage.

In this eye-opening episode, Timothy Walters tackles the critical gap in protection that exists for high-value items in typical homeowner's policies. He explains that standard insurance forms often impose severe limitations or complete exclusions for valuable possessions, leaving many at risk of significant financial loss. The good news? There's a straightforward solution that many insurance customers don't know about. Timothy breaks down how personal articles policies offer specialized protection for valuable possessions—often with zero deductibles and at surprisingly affordable rates.

Ready to discover if your prized possessions are truly protected? Call or text The Walters Agency for a free 20-minute consultation to ensure everything you value has the coverage it deserves!

To learn more about The Walters Agency visit:
https://www.brightway.com/agencies/tn/knoxville/0237/team
The Walters Agency
7009 Asheville Hwy
Knoxville, TN 37924
423-417-2070

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Walters Agency podcast, where
insurance meets peace of mind.
Hosted by licensed insuranceagent and owner, timothy Walters
, we're here to help families,homeowners and small business
owners throughout East Tennesseeprotect what matters most Our
mission creating win-win-winsolutions for insurance.
Let's dive in.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
You might assume your standard home insurance policy
covers everything inside yourhome, but that's not always the
case.
Viable items like jewelry, fineart and collectibles often
require additional coverage, sohow do you ensure your prized
positions are fully protected?
Welcome back everybody.
Skip Monty here, co-host slashproducer, back in the studio

(00:55):
with Timothy Walters, and I gota question for you.
I don't have a lot of pricelessartwork or jewelry or anything
like that, but I did collectguitars that I've had since I
was a kid, and so the questionof the day is are high value
items like jewelry, artwork,guitars and collectibles covered

(01:16):
under standard policies?

Speaker 3 (01:20):
So, generally speaking, the answer is yes and
no.
Okay, most of your standardhomeowner's insurance policies
that are out there on the marketHO3s, ho5s, to use the form
terms.
They will usually have limitedcoverage for higher value items
like jewelry, like fine art,like collector's guitars things

(01:42):
that are not necessarilyeveryday use, that have higher
values that would cost a lotmore to replace, are usually
going to either have a very,very severe limit on what the
company will pay out per item orsometimes they'll be completely
excluded, and that's somethingwe talked about in a previous
video.
You want to know what's coveredin your policy and what's not
covered in your policy.
You can schedule coverage forhigher value items in your

(02:08):
homeowner's insurance typically,but it's usually subject to the
policy deductible and itusually is fairly expensive to
schedule those things on astandard policy.
So there are these things.
Different companies call themdifferent things.
I was originally a State Farmguy back in the day.
They call them personalarticles policies.
They're inland marine policies,they're standalone and what

(02:32):
they specialize in for personaluse, for people who have jewelry
, people who have guitars,specialty instruments, equipment
, fine art I mean basically youcan insure almost anything on
them.
You can insure equipment liketractors.
If you're a car guy and youhave a lot of stuff, tools and
stuff you work on cars there canbe limitations on your

(02:53):
homeowner's insurance for thatkind of thing.
So if you are concerned aboutthat and you want to make sure
it's protected, it may be have alower deductible than will be
available on your homeowner's oryour, your renters insurance
policy.
And you can look into apersonal articles policy or
inland marine policy and usuallythey're less expensive to
ensure higher values and most ofthem will go with a zero

(03:16):
deductible still or they'll havelower deductible.
Most of the ones that I writeare either zero deductible or a
hundred dollar deductibles.
They're very simple to write anissue.
Typically most companies ifit's like jewelry or something
else that's really high value,they're going to want to have
some kind of appraisal toestablish value.
But for things like guitars orfirearms or other things people

(03:37):
might want to cover, usually youcan just look that up.
You know what's the currentvalue Like for mine.
I have one for my pistols, myshotguns and some of the other
firearms.
I just went out and I found hey, what are these costs?
Now, if somebody stole themfrom me and I needed to replace
them.
What would my rigor pistol gofor right now?
And I had to subject thatperiodically on the policy and

(03:59):
it doesn't cost much and I'mcovered.
So yeah, they're very easyAgents.
Like riding them because theyare easy-use organs.
Like I said, they are valuable.
If you do have that type ofthing to cover because your
homeowner's policy, I would bewilling to bet there's some kind
of limitation on the value thatthey'll go up to for that kind
of thing.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
So with a really high value, you do need you
mentioned an appraisal or somekind of documentation, but we're
up to things.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah, different companies are going to have
different thresholds for that.
I work with some companieswhere the threshold like if
you're trying to get greaterthan $10,000 value for one item,
they're going to require somekind of appraisal or proof of
value.
Some companies might have ahigher threshold Another one
that I work with, I think thethreshold is $25,000 before they

(04:47):
start requiring appraisals.
It just really depends on whichcompany you're working with,
but appraisals are not hard toget, especially like for jewelry
.
You can go down to a jewelerand get an appraisal done.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
For items like guitars in my case.
You said I could just do like aGoogle search and find values
based on this is what they'reselling for now, kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Yeah, you can say hey , look, you know this, this
guitar, this is what I bought itfor.
You can buy a similar guitarwherever you buy a guitar.
This is what it would cost.
Most insurance carriers aregoing to work with you on that.
If they do require additionalinformation, they'll let you
know.
Um, now, if it's like, hey, Ibought this uh guitar that was
played by slash, it's justprobably going to be a lot more

(05:31):
underwriting on that.
But you know, for typical,maybe higher value stuff like
musical instruments and all thatkind of thing that's not got
any kind of historical value orsomething like that, it's a
pretty straightforward process.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
So if my grandma's face gets broken, am I covered,
or do I just tell her the catdid it?
Is her face in your house it isOkay.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
So, yeah, that's that's what like.
If it, if it's a genuine, like300 year old vase that was owned
by Napoleon's great grandmother, there's probably going to be a
limit on.
They're probably going to treatthat like a regular vase in
your homeowner's insurancepolicy, because nobody said
anything about what it was orwhere it came from, what its
value is.
But if you do know, like, hey,this is a really valuable vase

(06:14):
and we want to cover its value,you can do that.
You can get a personal articlespolicy.
If it belongs to yourgrandmother, you want to make
sure she's named on the policy,even if it's staying at your
house.
But so, yeah, you can do that,you can get a policy for that
kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Very good to know, Very good to know.
Well, and in my case I'llprobably just tell her the cat
did it All right.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Thanks a lot, Timothy .

Speaker 2 (06:36):
All right man Appreciate it.
Good information.
We'll catch you in the next one, All right, see you then.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
That's a wrap on this episode of the Walters Agency
Podcast.
Ready to find the rightcoverage for your home, business
or family?
Call or text 423-417-2070 for afree 20-minute consultation.
Until next time, stay covered,stay protected and keep winning

(07:08):
with the Walters Agency.