Chad, you are quite right, your collection would not be adequately covered 
taking a percentage of the costs of the facility.  It is a creative thought 
but would not stand up in court should you and your insurance company get 
into a dispute.  I doubt they would even write a contract based on that 
methodology.



As easy as auction values are to research, insurance replacement value is 
supposed to give you enough money, after a loss, that you can replace your 
item in a timely fashion.  Hoping something similar or comparable to your 
thingie (subject property – the item you need to value) comes up at auction 
soon is not a “timely replacement” and so insurance valuation is calculated 
at the dealer level.   The dealer market is the primary market for research 
to assign values to your collection.  Most dealers have websites that 
illustrate their items very well thanks to the WWW.



(Note: forgive my attempts at humor, this info. is deadly boring.  Secondly, 
consult your insurance professional about the following advice; I am not an 
insurance professional.)

Within the Anthropology Department, the Ethnography collection will probably 
hold the most replacement value.  Value is based on people with money buying 
comparable items.  Your beaded “whatevers” are recognizable to the common 
purchaser and therefore desirable.  A nifty and historically important 
archeological doo- dad, is not as sexy and would not look as good on display 
in their home as the beaded “whatever.”  Tragic but true, we have to rely on 
un or undereducated people and their buying habits to place value on museum 
collections for typical insurance contracts.



Sadly or happily, your collections of ethnographic collections can be quite 
valuable and cannot be dealt with as you would your typical boxes of shards. 
Appraisal methodology allows for a sampling technique for huge amounts of 
SIMILAR materials.  If you can categorize your collections, maybe via 
computer records you can, for example, list all your beaded items. 
Gathering them in one place can be problematical but hopefully you will have 
good photos in your catalog records and can sort and gather your photos. 
Once you have the universe of objects to be sampled separated intellectually 
or physically you can do a blind random sampling based solely on the number 
of items from a random sample number table.  The National Park Service uses 
this methodology to conduct their annual inventories, check their museum 
website.



Another way to approach the sampling would be to ask a Curator who keeps an 
eye on the market to help rank the items in value order.  Research and value 
the 5 most valuable items in each category and come up with an agreeable 
lesser percentage of the top price for middle grade and low-end objects and 
multiply.  Yes, this is guessing but it is an educated guess.  In either 
methodology, you must spend time researching the current dealer-offering 
price of similar objects and multiply.



Archaeology items are a whole different story.  If you can locate another 
institution that has recently purchased a large collection similar to yours, 
you can use that figure but don’t hold your breath.  Researching the sale of 
very low-end material (low end to the market – not to history!) is very 
difficult.  Perhaps here is where your per box estimate may come in handy.



Working with your insurance carrier is critical as you develop the 
methodology.  Everyone has to agree to your process otherwise, when it come 
time to “adjust the loss” some time in the future, you may be very upset.



If you want to talk this over with me, ask questions etc., I remain happy to 
help.

Sara Conklin, ISA CAPP, Certified Appraiser  PH: 800-464-4208 
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