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Pinflation VS insurance

johnh

johnh

Site Supporter
10 Years
Joined
Apr 17, 2012
Messages
185
Location
Bournemouth
Hi folks

Who are you insuring your pins with? My current contents provider won't cover the value of my pins anymore - are you using separate insurers for your collections? Or are is your insurance company happy to cover. And in either case, who are you using?

TIA
 
I re-evaluated the games and the cost of insurance on the games due to Pinflation added £40K to the value.

I used current market prices and what pins are selling for on Pinside as well as over here.
 
Hope I’m not tempting fate here 😬..but …..has anyone ever actually had to make a claim on insurance for a pin or lost a pin in some way and it wasn’t covered ?

Edit - just remembered back in the Yahoo UK Pinball group days wasn’t there a chap whose ganes room / basement was badly flooded, lost a bunch of pins. I think the community had a collection to help him out ???
 
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I haven’t, and have actually paid to have the large tree next door removed, so now no possible damage from fallen trees.
 
Ours are covered under our normal house insurance, have unlimited with nationwide. But they are in the main house not an outbuilding/ pinshed or whatever, I imagine that makes a huge difference.
 
Sgt GrizZ said:
Hope I’m not tempting fate here 😬..but …..has anyone ever actually had to make a claim on insurance for a pin or lost a pin in some way and it wasn’t covered ?

Edit - just remembered back in the Yahoo UK Pinball group days wasn’t there a chap whose ganes room / basement was badly flooded, lost a bunch of pins. I think the community had a collection to help him out ???
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I vaguely remember a storage unit incident with sprinklers I think.
 
Dave Bishop said:
I haven’t, and have actually paid to have the large tree next door removed, so now no possible damage from fallen trees.
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We have an enormous sycamore tree behind us on the railway embankment. The odd small branch has come off in autumn storms. If the entire thing came down it could potentially crush the GrizZ Shack I suppose. I wonder how that would play out as assuming it’s the responsibility of the railway people ???
 
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The pins are, I believe classed as furniture,
I’m not sure about the premium on an outside building.

With £140,000 of contents cover.. with individual pinballs named.. BBB is £18K- that alone is half content cover of a standard £35K policy

It’s Definitely a mind game.. don’t insure the games room and it is Sod’s law something will happen.
 
I have done quite a few insurance jobs over the year. One was 8 pinballs flooded. Another was a burst pipe that burst upstairs, took the ceiling out and the guys pin was underneath.

None of these guys had specialist insurance. But in 2022 the values of pins are thru the roof. I would read your small print very carefully.
 
I’m surprised it’s more flood damage than fire damage for pins.
I can imagine a few queries being raised at any claim given the current price of games.

On an insurance note we finally got our roof tile replaced after the Jan (Feb?) storm. Absolutely no one available for six months to carry out the work.
One tile. Total insurance claim way over the grand mark as they needed scaffolding to access the roof. Zero problems from the insurers though.
 
@ianw 's team undertand pinball but that is extremely rare. I don't want to find myself in a position where only one insurer is available as who knows whether Ian's crew will be able to continue to insure them on a reasonable basis in the future. So every year I like to check that there is a Plan B.

The sheds are an absolute catastrophe from an insurance point of view. You are in computer says no territory if you keep pinball machines in a shed.

I contacted the british insurance brokers association. They asked me a few questions and recommended Adrian Flux to me. I spent one hour with some idiot at Adrian Flux to then get a quote that only covered outbuildings for a mighty £1,000 in total !!!!

I am digging around now. National Farmer's Union will insure them. They are very traditional in their approach. Ask you what guns, artwork and furs you own. They also look properly at your security. A friend had a claim and was extremely complimentary about NFU

As soon as you stray into a high net worth scenario chubb/ hiscox the premiums sky rocket.

I am giving thought to burning mine or moving them back inside the house as I find the whole business so frustrating.
 
No, I was unclear. They would only cover £1000 of losses from sheds
 
Ah, right, that makes more sense, yeah when I asked other companies and say pinball.. they ask how much they are and then cut the conversation short because they cant cover them.
 
Sgt GrizZ said:
We have an enormous sycamore tree behind us on the railway embankment. The odd small branch has come off in autumn storms. If the entire thing came down it could potentially crush the GrizZ Shack I suppose. I wonder how that would play out as assuming it’s the responsibility of the railway people ???
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Ultimately I guess their insurance should pick this up, but if it went to court they might get into wranglings about whether they were negligent. I've no idea if they'd win or not, but it'd do no harm dropping Network Rail an email outlining your concerns and about smaller branches having already fallen - even if they take no action, if you get an email reply from them it'd show that you'd raised a concern and help your case in terms of a negligence argument.
 
JT. said:
Ultimately I guess their insurance should pick this up, but if it went to court they might get into wranglings about whether they were negligent. I've no idea if they'd win or not, but it'd do no harm dropping Network Rail an email outlining your concerns and about smaller branches having already fallen - even if they take no action, if you get an email reply from them it'd show that you'd raised a concern and help your case in terms of a negligence argument.
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You are right. I’ll do that . Cheers.
 
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sarge I'd report it to the council, that way they can't say they didn't know about it. at least.

On insurance claims, I wouldn't like to be making a claim for an game the 'market' rates at 18K.

Neil.
 
DRD said:
I am giving thought to burning mine or moving them back inside the house as I find the whole business so frustrating.
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Just what I wanted to hear having just had the base laid for my posh shed!
Seriously, has anyone ever had a pin “lifted”?
Been pondering on shed security. Have an ethernet cable buried along with the armoured, plenty of options available along with lighting etc. Also not leaving sack barrows/scissor lift in with the pins.
Alan.
 
Got quite lucky with mine as double garage is part of the house and fully Insulated etc… they just come under normal house contents and cost extra £35 to cover them all.
 
The annoying thing about sheds is that you are swimming against the tide. No matter what you build them out of, no matter the security you include- most insurers don't give a damn.

Burglar alarm with integrated smoke detectors, limit number of windows, steel security door, internal metal electric roller shutters are all sensible choices and can be bought for modest money
 
Neil McRae said:
sarge I'd report it to the council, that way they can't say they didn't know about it. at least.

On insurance claims, I wouldn't like to be making a claim for an game the 'market' rates at 18K.

Neil.
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What do you mean @Neil McRae..

It is what the cost would be to replace the game.. the current market price is that.. or more.

It’s not based on “Neil’s” opnion on what the game is worth.

Find me a BBB for less
 
Dave Bishop said:
What do you mean @Neil McRae..

It is what the cost would be to replace the game.. the current market price is that.. or more.

It’s not based on “Neil’s” opnion on what the game is worth.

Find me a BBB for less
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Sounds like you have agreed market value for pins on your policy @Dave Bishop, best way for various reasons.

Almost all home insurance is new for old (reinstatement), so on that basis, you need to insure for the cost to replace, i.e. your 1990's DMD pin or whatever will suddenly be a NIB Pro from PH... so £8K currently EACH. On this basis an insurer will likely see a 'pinball machine' as a 'pinball machine', title, popularity etc. is not relevant. This may sound great (unless you have a BBB etc), but as said many times, check your single item limits for valuable/collectable items and the total (number of pins X £8K each or whatever) doesn't exceed a further total limit. As above, if in outbuildings, you're generally knackered.

More specialist insurance if you can find it may be agreed value, or indemnity (less an allowance for wear, tear and depreciation) or second hand market value and that's my understanding with Ian's insurance arrangements. I provide a list of pins each year with my estimated market values. Cover extends to outbuildings (need to disclose construction), plus up to two pins covered out at shows, noted within the schedule. Correct me @ianw if wrong here or if stealing your thunder (!)
 
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We should separate out brokers and underwriters. Most companies we talk to are brokers and many offer the same thing.
Everyone I spoke to didn’t understand pinball machines and called them furniture. And then gave me no confidence I would get the money to replace them.
Add in storing them in an outhouse and it was clear they were not going to be properly covered.

@ianw service, is tailored to what we actually need. And covers the art work we have etc.
 
Arv said:
I don't know you lot always bite. He's winding you up.
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io wasn't winding him up actually - I think insurance companies are likely to say - well here is the Thunderbirds pin that is the same thing as your unobtainable BBB. They do it with cars and loads of other insured things.

Neil
 
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