Hello, I have a question. I have Renter’s Insurance through USAA and I was wondering if it would cover my books if something happens? I have over a thousand books and I’m wanting to make sure they are covered in case something ever happens to them.
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Ask about a personal items floater. You may need an itemized inventory. At the very least, take pictures of the spine details.
Cody said:
Ask about a personal items floater. You may need an itemized inventory. At the very least, take pictures of the spine details.
I have made a list using Google Docs that has the price listed that I bought it for.
@Jess
Pictures can’t hurt as well
If there’s a fire, pictures show you had them. The XLS shows what you paid.
But you still need to ask how to best cover the collection. High value collectibles need their own coverage. It costs about as much as renters.
They have a line price item for ‘book’ and they will cut you a check for however many ‘books’ were lost. If you have ‘replacement cost coverage’ and you purchase all the books again and submit receipts they will issue you a supplementary payment to cover the difference.
The value of most books drops sharply as soon as they are ‘used.’ If you had a covered loss, you would be paid the values of the used books at the time of loss. If/when you replaced them, then they would pay replacement cost for items actually replaced.
Not sure about Renters, but I had a claim through Homeowner’s a few years ago and USAA adjustor was trying to say the books were worth garage sale prices (like 50 cents a book). I don’t have a huge collection of first editions or anything, but many of my books have been accumulated over decades and are out of print. Some are nice quality hardcovers. Or are on esoteric topics so they are difficult to replace. There’s a big difference between that and a bunch of mass-market paperbacks you can find in any bargain bin. I had to push back hard to get that increased and it was still nowhere near actual replacement cost. USAA itself recommends special Collections coverage if you collect something. The challenge is they couldn’t tell me (when I asked) how to establish the value of things like a toy collection. So I’d call and ask them directly. And, as with anything related to property coverage, videotape your books once a year and keep the video in the cloud. Also maybe file the list of books as a document with USAA so it’s on record. Hope this helps!
Books are generally low value. Are they cataloged?
Uma said:
Books are generally low value. Are they cataloged?
I have them all on a list with Title, Author, type of book (Hardback/Paperback), and the price I bought them for. At the moment, the current estimate is about 16k for all of them.
Most people would call USAA and ask since they are the company they have insurance with.
Adler said:
Most people would call USAA and ask since they are the company they have insurance with.
I would, but when I went into the app, it said that chat and call were unavailable.
@Jess
Business hours
If they’re particularly rare or valuable, a special policy would be best. Otherwise, yeah, keep an inventory and receipts to show as proof of purchase price.
No. Your works need to get them endorsed onto the policy. ‘Regular’ insurance doesn’t cover ‘collections’ that the carrier doesn’t know about. So just call them and notify them. Find out if additional premiums would be due.