[NHCOLL-L:1404] Re: Insurance Value for a Bald Eagle

[Una Smith]

steve.amos wrote:

>Every specimen is, in a sense, priceless beyond measure! You can't
>just factor in a "replacement value" - how do you replace a Picasso,
>a Samuel Clements letter?

Works of art and letters are not replaceable, but these men were so
productive, and their works so widely sold, that it may not be hard
to assign a fair current market value to any specimen of their work.

The problem with natural history specimens is that they are generally
not sold or, if sold, their prices are not made public.  So there is
little or no market data from which to estimate a fair current value. 
Hence attempts to use insurance values, presumably in the hope that
museum curators use their own private market data to help decide how
much insurance to buy.  But the problem here is that insurance is a
bet, not a measure of value.  People buy life insurance on themselves
and their family members, but no one (at least no one I know) thinks
life insurance is a fair measure of a person's worth.

	Una Smith

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mailstop K-710, Los Alamos, NM  87545