Certaintly not spam, this is an important topic.
It is a persistently difficult issue, so difficult that I never keep anything at
home.
The gist of discussions I have
had on this topic, regarding insurance under a general policy, is that if your house
burns down, you may get compensated, also if there seems to be an opportunistic theft in which you also lost your ipod, laptop and some silver tableware. In such cases, the coins are just contents like anything else. But you are likely to have to prove value after the fact, and purchase receipts may be inadequate at the time you make a claim. The insurer may well seek a "valuation" which of course no-one ever has, since that is an expensive process. If your coins are targeted, you may
face much greater problems getting compensation. There is also likely a limitation on valuables as a percentage of the insured total (perhaps 20% or less), and, even worse, as valuables as a percentage of claim for any one incident. So that if the coins were stolen as such you may fail that hurdle.
The long and short of it, you may be able to insure a
collection under a general insurance. But you may not be able to claim in practice, except if the
collection was lost to a general incident such as a burn-down or a general ransacking. The hassle of arranging the insurance may adversely affect the cost of your insurance as a whole - it may greatly limit the number of policy providers you can go to for example. You may find there are very specific target-hardening measures that are required (alarms, window locks, occupancy, even fire-proof safes screwed into concrete fittings.), and if you forget to put on the alarm or go on a 15 day holiday all this can be invalidated. The fact of talking about the subject on the internet may invalidate the policy - there has been news articles in the UK recently where the fact of showing your house on facebook may invalidate its insurance, let alone talking about holiday plans.
I'm sure there is a Dilbert cartoon covering this scenario, but the net result is that the £100 mentioned may in practice insure you for hardly anything.
Best advice, don't keep any valuables at
home, which you are not prepared to lose.
