Document your collection for insurance

Most people write their collection down after something happens: a burst pipe, a break-in, a quote for contents cover that turned out to be far too low. The work is the same either way, and it is much easier before.

This page is about what a record has to contain to be worth anything in a claim, and which parts of that ctlgs holds for you. It is not advice about what cover to buy — policies differ, limits per item differ, and the only way to know what your insurer wants is to ask them.

A count is not a record

"Forty books" is not a claim. Neither is "my record collection" or "about thirty posters". An adjuster cannot value a count, and a police report cannot identify one. What both of them need is a list of specific objects, each described well enough that a stranger could tell your copy from a different printing of the same title.

That is also the difference between a list that loses you money and one that does not. Forty books insured as forty books get settled at whatever the policy says books are worth. Forty editions, each named, dated and graded, get settled as what they are.

What an insurer or a police report asks for

Per object, in rough order of how often it is asked for:

• What it is, exactly. Title, and then the detail that separates one printing from another: publisher or label, year, format, catalogue number, ISBN or barcode, pressing or print run, edition statement.
• Condition. A grade, and a note on anything that moves the value: a faded spine, a pinhole, a replaced cartridge, a signature.
• What you paid and when. The purchase price and date are the baseline for any settlement, and a receipt or an order confirmation beats a memory.
• Photographs. Front, back, spine or label, any signature or number, and the damage if there is any. Photographs are what turn "a first edition" into "this copy".
• Where it was. Which room, which shelf, which storage unit — both for a claim limited by location and for working out what is actually missing.
• A valuation, for anything above the per-item limit. That usually means a dealer or an appraiser, not a database.

The shared entry has already done half of it

The first item on that list is the slow one, and it is the part ctlgs has already done. Catalog entries here describe the object, not the title: the publisher, the year, the ISBN, the region code, the print run, the cover. So when you add a copy, you are pointing at a description that already exists and that other collectors have corrected over the years, rather than typing a paragraph into a spreadsheet cell and hoping it is specific enough.

That is why ctlgs separates the title from the object at all — see editions and pressings, and variants and limited editions for the cases where it genuinely is a different object.

Which field holds which part

Location, purchase price and the acquired date are never shown to anybody else, whatever privacy setting your list has. Nobody browsing ctlgs can see what your collection is worth or where it is, and that is deliberate: a public inventory of valuables with addresses attached is not something to build.

Your own fields are the place for a serial number, a grading certificate number, which crate something is in, or the dealer you bought it from.

Your whole collection downloads as a CSV from your collection page, one row per copy, with the owner-only columns included in your own export. That file, plus your photographs, is the thing to keep somewhere that will survive the house: cloud storage, or a copy with somebody else.

What ctlgs does not do

• No valuations and no appraisals. Nothing here tells you what an object is worth. Asking prices on copies listed for sale, and completed sales elsewhere, are evidence — not a figure a database should assert.
• No photographs of your copy. Images on an entry belong to the entry — they are shared, they describe the object, and they are public. Pictures of the actual copy in your house, with its damage and its signature, are yours to store yourself.
• No import and no barcode scanning, so a collection goes in by hand.

For now, treat ctlgs as the part that describes the objects and tracks your copies, and keep your own folder of photographs and receipts beside the export. If you have not started yet, collection management for collectors is the practical walk-through, and the books and home video catalogs are the biggest ones to start in.