[Nhcoll-l] Collections insurance values

Mon Jul 28 17:45:00 EDT 2014

Something to consider is that if you have valued each specimen at 1k, that means that your prize exhibit piece, say a mounted T rex, is worth as much as, say, a turtle carapace fragment.  Now, if those same two specimens get destroyed then you’re getting back 1k for each.  That just doesn’t seem right.  It’s also worth noting that there is a public perception to be had – if a carapace fragment gets destroyed, or even an entire exhibit case of carapace fragments, how upset will your university president be compared to how upset they will be if someone destroys a mounted T rex?  How will the public react and how likely will the news outlets be interested in the story if they find out your prize exhibit piece was not insured, or only insured for 1k?  As much as I agree about the scientific value being priceless, sometimes these issues have to be looked at in a slightly more pragmatic light.

In reality, most palaeontology collections have a few highly prized specimens along with a lot of isolated material.  It may be better to pick a threshold of, for example, $100,000, and insure all those specimens above that threshold at market value.  (For a collection of 10,000 specimens, at 1k each the collection is worth 10 million; for the cost of the premiums at 10 million you could also insure your 100 most important specimens for $100,000 each).  The commercial fossil market is big enough that almost any fossil nowadays has a well-defined market value.  The replacement value will be a fraction of the market value, and with the value of fossils being so intrinsic it makes more sense to simply follow the marketplace.  Also, it’s worth keeping in mind that the insurance value of specimens on exhibit should be markedly higher due to the increased risk they are at for damage.

Brandon Strilisky
Head of Collections Management
T: 403-820-6211 | F: 403-823-7131

Royal Tyrrell Museum
Box 7500, Drumheller, Alberta T0J 0Y0 Canada
www.tyrrellmuseum.com<http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/>

Government of Alberta
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From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Furth, David
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2014 3:04 PM
To: 'Anita Cholewa'; Peter Rauch
Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Collections insurance values

This issue arises every few years and there is no easy answer or solution.

Like many institutions we do not assign values to our collections, for many reasons.  We are essentially “self-insured”, i.e. if something is damaged we do not try to recuperate funds.  We do sometimes insure collections being transported and we just try to use a very approximate, but educated value (see below).

Although a slightly different issue, as far as the IRS is concerned, the value of specimens must be based on a “fair market value”, i. e, a similar amount of  money exchanged for similar objects.  Such values can be onerous to obtain (e. g., from commercial dealer or auction catalogs, etc.) and often cannot be truly done accurately.  And, of course, it is illegal for recipient institutions to provide values to donors or potential donors.  Believe me I understand and sympathize with the issue of irreplaceability of natural history objects (usually very different from art, etc.), but the authorities, and probably even insurance companies, have a different view and do not understand the scientific value.

This probably does not provide a clear answer, because it is not an easy or clear cut issue!

******************************************************
David G. Furth, Ph.D.
Department of Entomology
MRC 165, P.O. Box 37012
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D. C. 20013-7012  USA
Phone: 202-633-0990
Fax: 202-786-2894
Email: furthd at si.edu<mailto:furthd at si.edu>
Website: www.entomology.si.edu<http://www.entomology.si.edu>

From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Anita Cholewa
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2014 4:01 PM
To: Peter Rauch
Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Collections insurance values

Of course museum specimens, by their very nature, are irreplaceable so a valuation should be infinite.
However, from an insurance standpoint (and let's be honest, there has to be some minimum value put on these things) you might want to check with an institution such as the Smithsonian or the Field Museum as to how a valuation can be assessed.
Anita

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Peter Rauch <peterar at berkeley.edu<mailto:peterar at berkeley.edu>> wrote:
It would seem that a "scientific" specimen's value today would depend greatly not only on the cost of a field collecting trip, but also on the very potential of being able to collect "equivalent" (whatever that means) genetic samples, which may be not only time period dependent (specimens sampled from populations of 50/100/200 years ago), but also locality dependent (locality/habitat conditions that no longer exists).
Such variational representation that those specimens lost from our scientific collections has become so much more meaningful (detectable, analyzable, interpretable, valuable) with today's scientific knowledge and understanding. One can not simply buy more of the same specimens with the price of a field trip.
How would those lost or significantly altered situations affect the replacement (if that is what it is to be called) valuation of lost specimens ?
Peter

On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Brown, Matthew A <matthewbrown at utexas.edu<mailto:matthewbrown at utexas.edu>> wrote:
Dear list,

We've recently been in discussions with the University's Risk Assessment office about their annual (?) policy update. I know that when they visited last about five years ago, we gave them a ballpark of $1-1.5k cost of replacement per specimen for our paleontological collections. In this recent conversation, they sent a section from the Fine Arts policy stating more or less that loss of "archeological" objects will only be paid out at fair market value, not cost of replacement from the field. I've let them know that as scientific collections, they don't have commercial value, and that the only way we could rebuild a similar collection is through field work. Risk Management is checking with the insurance company for clarification, and I'm asking for input from the community to find out how other institutions handle this issue. We've been round on this with customs declaration values before, but I can't think of a resource for this particular issue.

Any advice would be appreciated.

With thanks,

Matthew A. Brown, M.Sc.
Head of Collections, Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory
Lecturer, Department of Geological Sciences
Jackson School of Geosciences
The University of Texas at Austin
R7600, Austin, TX 78758
Office:(512)232-5515<tel:%28512%29232-5515>
matthewbrown at utexas.edu<mailto:matthewbrown at utexas.edu>
jsg.utexas.edu/vpl<http://jsg.utexas.edu/vpl>
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_______________________________________________
NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.

--
__________
Anita F. Cholewa, Ph.D.
Curator of the UM Herbarium (MIN)
   and Acting Curator of Lichens
J.F. Bell Museum of Natural History
University of Minnesota
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