What happens to your books?

LA Rabbit · Post by **LA Rabbit** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:14 pm

I am sure my wife will drop them off at Goodwill. I don't think I have any high value books and I don't keep things in slabs or stored under ideal conditions. Maybe some niece or nephew will want them. I know I always wanted some Uncle to leave me a bunch of comics.

boshuda · Post by **boshuda** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:16 pm

ctowner1 wrote:An interesting offshoot of this discussion would be: if your collection was (God forbid!) utterly destroyed, what would you do? Would you try to reassemble it? And if so, what would you re-buy? Would you still buy the same titles you're buying now?

For me, I honestly am not sure if I can answer this. There's no way I'm going back and re-buying all those Uncanny X-Men's I kept buying for years just to keep the run going. But I also don't think I'd could bring myself to start an Amazing Spider-man run from scratch. Perhaps I'd re-buy a lot of the collection in Masterworks Collections? But how about, say, nu52 DC comics. Would I re-buy the first 12 Batman's, which I quite liked? Perhaps. The 1st 12 JLA's that I found pretty mediocre? I dunno.

And in terms of what I'd continue to buy monthly? Perhaps even as tough. I love buying the majority of the titles I buy each month as I have for decades and decades. I think I would keep buying the bulk of what I buy now.

e
L nny

I think I would stop collecting, except to buy digital comics as they went on sale.

Trev · Post by **Trev** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:54 pm

ctowner1 wrote:
Trev wrote:
ctowner1 wrote:I thought it's difficult and expensive to get your collection assessed for the purposes of insurance. No?

e
L nny
It's kind of like life insurance. Depends on how much you want and what you are insuring. All I had to do was roughly break down the collection and keep some kind of records.
how much extra annual premium do you pay for how much more potential insurance?

e
L nny

I don't know their whole fee schedule. I recommend you reach out to them for a quote online. It is free.

www.collectinsure.com

btw, I am not a paid spokesman.

Trev · Post by **Trev** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:57 pm

ctowner1 wrote:An interesting offshoot of this discussion would be: if your collection was (God forbid!) utterly destroyed, what would you do? Would you try to reassemble it? And if so, what would you re-buy? Would you still buy the same titles you're buying now?

e
L nny

This is why I have insurance, so I have the cash to try and replace them in such an event. I don't think I would replace every book, but I would start trying to reassemble the key runs in the collection. books from the last 10 years or so I wouldn't miss and wouldn't re-buy.

I gave up even tracking modern books in my DB. I'll do that work when they are at least 10 years old. Otherwise it is too much maintenance work.

My reading habits would not change.

rzing20480_2000 · Post by **rzing20480_2000** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 2:18 pm

This is a great topic. I've already thought of what needs to be done to dispose of the collection in case of my untimely, I have a friend who's an ebay seller and a former comic collector so he will help my wife on that front, but I've yet to think of insuring them. Need to give that a bit of thought.

ctowner1 · Post by **ctowner1** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 12:35 pm

Trev wrote:
ctowner1 wrote:
Trev wrote: It's kind of like life insurance. Depends on how much you want and what you are insuring. All I had to do was roughly break down the collection and keep some kind of records.
how much extra annual premium do you pay for how much more potential insurance?

e
L nny
I don't know their whole fee schedule. I recommend you reach out to them for a quote online. It is free.

www.collectinsure.com

btw, I am not a paid spokesman.

hmmm. I guess I have a lot of cataloging work ahead of me if I'm going to calculate what I think my collection is worth. I said $20K (I have no real idea - 42 packed long boxes with many near-complete runs of classic Marvels - but a lot in sub-par condition). I think at least 17,000 comics.

Out of curiosity, I said $20K - and it gave me a $112 annual premium. but I guess that begs the question: if I got $20K for my destroyed collection, would I spend it on replacing it? Not so sure.

e
L nny

ctowner1 · Post by **ctowner1** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 12:41 pm

Trev wrote:I don't know their whole fee schedule. I recommend you reach out to them for a quote online. It is free.

www.collectinsure.com

btw, I am not a paid spokesman.

Trev, would you be able to email me a copy of the policy? I do insurance coverage law for a living, and would be interested to see the form of the policy. Just redact out any personal info/numbers that you'd like. I'll give you my opinion of any potential problems in the wording.

e
L nny

MobileHome · Post by **MobileHome** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 1:57 pm

The thing is, there's the value according to the guide and then there's the actual money you'd be able to get. Most dealers will give you only a fraction of the value of your collection.

rzing20480_2000 · Post by **rzing20480_2000** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 2:26 pm

But you want to insure for replacement cost if you plan on replaceing them.

Trev · Post by **Trev** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:29 pm

rzing20480_2000 wrote:But you want to insure for replacement cost if you plan on replaceing them.

Right. Not their value selling to a dealer but their replacement cost. Their value on the open market.

MobileHome · Post by **MobileHome** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 8:07 am

Ah, of course

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 8:30 pm

Trev wrote: It is pretty easy with an insurance company focused on collectables. a lot of folks use collectinsure. They are pretty good to deal with.

If your collection fits easily into the contents clause for your homeowners, then no reason for additional. Sounds like yours probably does based on the description.

ctowner1 wrote:I thought it's difficult and expensive to get your collection assessed for the purposes of insurance. No?

What about theft/fire/flood?
I've heard collector's horror stories from people who thought their collectibles were covered by a normal homeowner's policy and then found out that it's VERY difficult to get the company to pay up anything close to replacement value on collectibles.

Conversely, in my research, I found many people extolling the virtues of http://www.collectinsure.com/ (which is who I use).

For mine (since it's insured for a LOT) they called 3 references I provided to ensure I really had that many comics and other stuff. I had them call MyComicShop.com, DCBS, and my LCS. Beyond that, you just need to keep good records and have some decent proof of the stuff you own (like the gallery of pictures of my room I keep on this site, my PhotoBucket galleries, and OA galleries at ComicArtFans.com

I have the collection in ComicBase, and we back that up every now & again. I keep copies of the database in our Safe Deposit box at the bank. I also have burned DVDs with pictures of stuff in my comics room in the box.

Do you have plans to dispose of your collection at some point in your life?
Nope. I'm keeping it. Maybe cull out some of the lame stuff at some point for space, but I'd likely get no money for that 90s stuff. I'd just as soon run it through a shredder & make bricks from the scraps than sell them to a dealer for a penny a piece.

What happens to your books if something happens to you?
Stephen & Greg would get it. Some they might keep for their own or for sentimental value. If it needed to be sold, Stephen is well aware of what the stuff is worth & knows how to use eBay to sell.

Gilgabob · Post by **Gilgabob** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:28 am

BobBretall wrote:
Trev wrote: It is pretty easy with an insurance company focused on collectables. a lot of folks use collectinsure. They are pretty good to deal with.

If your collection fits easily into the contents clause for your homeowners, then no reason for additional. Sounds like yours probably does based on the description.

ctowner1 wrote:I thought it's difficult and expensive to get your collection assessed for the purposes of insurance. No?
What about theft/fire/flood?
I've heard collector's horror stories from people who thought their collectibles were covered by a normal homeowner's policy and then found out that it's VERY difficult to get the company to pay up anything close to replacement value on collectibles.

Conversely, in my research, I found many people extolling the virtues of http://www.collectinsure.com/ (which is who I use).

For mine (since it's insured for a LOT) they called 3 references I provided to ensure I really had that many comics and other stuff. I had them call MyComicShop.com, DCBS, and my LCS. Beyond that, you just need to keep good records and have some decent proof of the stuff you own (like the gallery of pictures of my room I keep on this site, my PhotoBucket galleries, and OA galleries at ComicArtFans.com

I have the collection in ComicBase, and we back that up every now & again. I keep copies of the database in our Safe Deposit box at the bank. I also have burned DVDs with pictures of stuff in my comics room in the box.

I admire your thoroughness. I would imagine you have done everything required to successfully file a claim. I haven't yet felt like I have the type of collection worth insuring. It's cool to see what steps you've taken though.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 12:12 pm

Gilgabob wrote: I admire your thoroughness. I would imagine you have done everything required to successfully file a claim. I haven't yet felt like I have the type of collection worth insuring. It's cool to see what steps you've taken though.

I dragged my feet on doing this for about 10 years of seeing the CollectInsure people in their booth at the San Diego Con every year.

Even after seriously looking into it and starting prep, it took me 2 years to finally pull the trigger & get the insurance.

I think it's all my original art, all the statues (that are vulnerable to a BIG earthquake) plus the larger # of silver age stuff I now have that really got me to finally do it.

With a value of >$500k it really made sense to protect it.