Michael,
I'm another unlucky soul who is often faced with trying to evaluate some rather strange military or industrial items to satisfy the gods of accounting & insurance. Another thing to keep in mind is that while I'm not an insurance professional and don't play one on TV, I am married to one.
While it's difficult to find items like this on eBay - never say never. There's currently a Beech Starship there (display only as the Beech company has ceased to support this aircraft). I'm sure you're aware that there are collectors for nearly everything and probably have had contact with several. I've had a gentlemen who for the last 7-8 years has been combing the ranks of his fellow radar aficionados and bringing me examples of WWII aircraft radar sets and ancillary equipment.
What I look at is who/what I'm valuing the item for. If it's for accounting purposes (yes I know it's better not to capitalize collections, but the organization had a several decade-old tradition of doing so when I got here and I'm not going to win that argument during my lifetime.), we have a lower limit of $1,000 below which I'm not required to provide back up for my evaluation. Above that, I would normally look for recent sales of comparable items to have as back up. With the type of items we're talking about here, finding such is nearly impossible, so items often end up capitalized at less than $1,000 regardless of what my gut instinct tells me they're worth.
Where insurance coverage is concerned, we basically have a $5,000 deductible under our umbrella coverage for collections. Above that value we try to evaluate and cover the individual item. Still, I have to look at replacement/restoration cost if the item was damaged or lost and make sure I've valued it sufficiently to cover our likely liability there. So that is one way to look at some of these difficult items. What would we be willing to spend to replace or restore the item? That's how much it should be insured for.
With some rather large & complex artifacts, I look for any major components that are more likely to appear on the open market and then sum these values adding comparable amounts for any that I couldn't find and then add a percentage for the value of having the items already assembled into a whole.
As to historical value, if the item is truly unique because of it's individual history, that is the hardest thing to compute in any logical manner. If you can enlist any other knowledgeable individuals (both internal & external to your museum) and come to a consensus, that's what I'd recommend. We periodically get a group of people together like this and re-evaluate our aircraft to make sure their insurance value isn't lagging too far behind the market.
I know there is no single, simple answer to this problem, so I'll be interested in any other responses as well. In the meantime, while writing this reply, I've been tasked with reviewing our insurance coverage for the helmet that Lindbergh got in Paris to replace his original which was copped by someone in the crowd at Le Bourget. This one was signed by Lindbergh and seven other aviation notables at that time. Anyone care to take a stab at this?
RT
Ron Twellman, Curator of Collections
EAA AirVenture Museum
P.O. Box 3065
Oshkosh, WI 54903-3065
920-426-5917
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Simons, Michael A. (Contr)
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 7:54 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Value
Any suggestions on putting values, for insurance purposes, on large pieces of military and electrical equipment; i.e.; radars, jamming devices, cannons, torpedoes, etc? In their day, some of these objects were part of multi-million dollar systems. They have a value if sold as scrap but I am interested in a method of assessing their value as historical objects. This is not the kind of equipment you see on e-bay or at military shows.
Michael Aurele Simons
Director
Historical Electronics Museum
1745 Nursery Road
Linthicum, Maryland 21090
410-765-3803
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www.hem-usa.org
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