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 [log in to unmask] ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).