To gain evidence of value for insurance purposes, I believe you have to take the collection to the FLGS (your local store) and have it appraised.  Of course, finding someone competent could be an adventure in itself.  There are three comic book/gaming shops in my town and I doubt any of them could properly value my D&D collection.  Anyway, I would assume a similar method would be necessary to determine value.

Now, onto the topic of leveraging for financial gain, this personally does sound like a good idea in today's market.  I'm not sure it's a good idea ever.  The main reason for this is, if you have a collection so valuable that it has to be insured, then that means you are paying for insurance which means that needs to be subtracted from any gains which means you are not really making that much money and may even lose money when the market is weak or negative.  Plus, what happens if the collection deteriorates or is stolen or is burned to a crisp?  The real loss though is the loss of sleep and time.  If you have a collection because it's "fun" then processing the paperwork and the insurance and the investments just took all the fun right out of it.  

I personally have a collection of comics, minis and D&D stuff worth about $5,000.00 and if it's gone, it's gone.  In fact, I plan on selling some of the comics as I finish reading them if for no other reason than to get the value down.  My kids would rather have the money and no one needs the hassle of unloading a large collection.

The bottom line is that I believe collecting should remain fun and investing should be separate.  I have mutual funds and the 401k stuff, and they allow me to sleep peacefully at night.   It may appear "smart" to leverage a collection, but I personally wouldn't.  O.K. End of rant.  What anybody else does with their collection is their business, and I'm not telling anybody what to do.  

I am not so concerned about what it is worth.  For me it is a hobby and not an investment.  

Lets face it, collecting is a stupid investment anyway.  It is hardly liquid, very difficult to value, difficult to store etc.  Most people who "invest" in obscure stuff like RPG's will be sorely dissapointed when it comes time to sell.

just my thoughts

TheMilford wrote:Look at the value of vintage video game systems... Atari 5200s in the box with boxed games go for less than $50 now. Used to go for well over $150.

As we start to die off or stop fueling the vintage RPG fire it will go down too.

While I agree that vintage RPG items will lose some value over time I don't believe that video games are a good analogy.  

While I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the Atari 2600, I will also freely admit the game play sucked.  The games coming out today are generally far more enjoyable and eye catching.  Other than nostalgia there is NO reason to buy an Atari 2600.  

I will freely admit a bias towards vintage RPG items but I think you would be hard pressed to find any gamers who have been exposed to basic D&D or 1st edition AD&D who think it sucks.  I would say that OD&D sucks based on the technical merits of rules.    Even people who play 3rd or 4th edition D&D can still have fun playing through modules that were originally designed for earlier editions of the game.  

I doubt kids who grew up on XBox would find Asteroids interesting for more than 30 seconds.

I think the value of vintage RPG items will hold and even continue to increase until around 2040.  This assumes the average male has a lifespan of 75 years.  I think the vast majority of interest in vintage RPG items is from males who were in their teens and twenties in the 1970s and 80s.  Most of these gamers will still be with us until 2040 and we be becoming increasingly financially secure.  Couple roughly steady demand and ncreasing assets with a decrease in available items due to destruction and items disappearing into vaults there is little reason to think the bottom will fall out of the market in the very near future.  

After 2040 I think the value will start dropping significantly.  There will be younger people who start collecting from a historical perspective but they are very unlikely to be as motivated to pay the prices demanded today.

I need to have my stash appraised for insurance.

Do you think Troll & Toad may do this for me if I send them a list? I figure the have the most inflated prices so the list values would remain "current" for a long time.

Anybody have experience with this?

I simply told my insurance agent (Allstate) what I wanted it all insured at as a whole.  It was no problemo.

I'll just take mine to Crazy Egor if need be.

Maybe. The funny thing about that is getting conditions -- what one might say is near mint another might say is only excellent. So, scans would probably help even better. I don't know how much time he has for doing such things, but he might do it... for a fee, I'd imagine.

I recently went through this exercise with my insurance agent (Stafe Farm).

Bascially, I could name the amount to insure as long as I used a consistent method... either aquisition or replacement amounts.  I keep a spreadsheet with purchase prices that established the insured amount.

The key, though, is which rate is used to calculate the premium.  There is a steep difference between types of collectible... Rare books are charged at $50 per $10,000 value, per year.  Other collectibles, like cards or comics, are $200 per $10,000.  There wasn't a rate for game-books as such, so we had to ask the underwriter for a ruling; sure enough I ended up with the higher premium.  

If I had it to do over, I would just apply for coverage for my 'rare books'