Insure your trains!

[alpineaustralia]

Recently, we updated our house and contents insurance and my wife dutifully suggested that I quantify the cost of my train sets and list them specifically as insured items in the policy.

 

I havent done that yet (mainly because I dont want her to know how much I have spent on them) but that the point remains a good one.

 

I estimate that at approximately $100- $200 per train + set of carriages, tracks, transformers, decoders, lighting, boosters, DCC command and postage,  many of us would easily have invested thousands of dollars in our trains and the replacement value would probably dissuade us from re-purchasing them again (especially if they were becoming collectors' items).

 

I am also reminded by a story that Bernard posted just today about a friend of his whose house was broken into but who luckily did not not lose his trains. While many theives are unlikely to want to steal train sets, they may be vandalised as part of a break in, damaged as a result of fire or water and storm damage etc within the home, or alternatively thay may stolen or damaged outside of the home (for example in the course of being transported in the boot of your car).

 

I would urge you all to take this precaution.

 

(Apologies if this sounds school marm-ish)

[bill937ca]

A very good idea.

[Martijn Meerts]

I don't really want to know how much my trains are worth, I think I'd faint. Not to mention all the other stuff I've got here.. Computers, consoles, audio equipment, cd's, dvd's, etc. etc.

[Bernard]

Alpine - I am know calling up my insurance agent to see if our blanket coverage on our house includes the trains. The irony is my American Flyer trains (S scale) that are in storage, are probably worth the most and I never use them.

 

In the case of my friend Dave, he's thinks the thieves knew exactly what they were doing. He has two Collies and they brought food for them when they broke in.

[cteno4]

ouch, you touched an old never as i keep meaning to photo the collection at least and get that off site.

 

check with your insurance, ones something like this reaches a point it becomes a "collection" and some policies then have a limit on that with the blanket policy and you need a rider to cover larger amounts.

 

i dont want to total train value, i will whince and if the wife sees it ill be just a rotting corpse in the basement...

 

thanks for prodding me to at least do the camera work fast to get some sort of documentation. i usually do this when i got to train shows just incase we were to get ripped off and the few milk crates of trains go poof! each one of those contains about $2500 in trains! i left a small bag of trams at someone's house recently and realized that it was $1500 worth of trains...

 

takes me back when i would have my computer in my car and realized that it was worth several times the car's blue book value! funny how the computers are getting down to the cost of our trains now!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Bernard]

funny how the computers are getting down to the cost of our trains now!

 

The interesting thing is whereas computers are costing less than they did a few years ago, they don't retain their value and become obsolete in a short time span, but a train that is no longer being produced can become priceless.

[cteno4]

funny how the computers are getting down to the cost of our trains now!

 

The interesting thing is whereas computers are costing less than they did a few years ago, they don't retain their value and become obsolete in a short time span, but a train that is no longer being produced can become priceless.

 

although that is slowing so much now since the power and features of even cheap computers these days is more than 98% of the users need there is less need to upgrade! problem i have had with the pcs is they have just plain died on me at an ave of 2 years for the last 3. my macs still never die on me and usually go through a total second life as a hand me down. my main machine mac cycle has definitely slowed in the last decade as its taking longer before i really find the new machine will warrent the cost for any feature/performance boost that will be noticable/useful.

 

if you hold onto your computers long enough they may become priceless! have a kaypro and sinclairz80 in the closet im waiting to become collectors items!

 

all that said i would much rather collect trains than computers! trains are more fun!

 

cheers

 

jeff