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# Your coin collection is insured for $200
- URL: https://thewalkthrough.ghost.io/your-coin-collection-is-insured-for-200/
- Published: 2026-08-24T18:12:12.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-25T15:10:41.000Z
- Author: Rita Nowak

### Jewelry is $1,500, and only if somebody steals it.

| The Walkthrough                                                                                  |
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| FILE NO ......... 003 FRI 21 AUG 2026 SUBJECT ......... COVERAGE C, SPECIAL LIMITS BUFFALO, N.Y. |

Good morning. Here is a sentence from the standard homeowners form, more or less word for word.

| Section I — Special Limits of Liability $200 on money, bank notes, bullion, gold other than goldware, silver other than silverware, platinum other than platinumware, coins, medals, scrip, stored value cards and smart cards. |
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Two hundred dollars is the total for that whole category, per loss, however much of it you own, rather than two hundred per coin. It does not come out of your contents coverage either, since it was never really part of that in the first place.

Gold closed around $4,500 an ounce this week. One coin, therefore, runs to more than twenty times the entire category limit. Keep a dozen of them upstairs and the standard form treats the lot as a decent set of headphones.

|  | I wrote this figure onto a hundred estimates before it occurred to me to wonder when anybody last looked at it. |
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Item 2 — the rest of the schedule

Several other ceilings sit in the same section. The right-hand column is where people come unstuck.

| Category                                            | Limit    | Applies to |
| --------------------------------------------------- | -------- | ---------- |
| Money, bullion, coins, goldand silver not tableware | 200.00   | any loss   |
| Securities, deeds,manuscripts, passports, stamps    | 1,500.00 | any loss   |
| Jewelry, watches, furs,precious stones              | 1,500.00 | theft only |
| Firearms and relatedequipment                       | 2,500.00 | theft only |
| Silverware, goldware,platinumware                   | 2,500.00 | theft only |

Figures as printed on the current standard form. Older editions run lower on some lines, and carriers set their own: I have seen the firearms line written at $1,000, $2,000 and $2,500 by three companies in the same state. Yours will be in your policy.

Those three marked theft only work backward from what most people assume. Your grandmother's silver service is capped at $2,500 if somebody carries it out of the house. If the house burns down instead, the cap does not apply and the silver falls under your ordinary contents coverage, same as the furniture.

The same holds for the jewelry and the guns. I spent years assuming there was a principle behind which categories got singled out, and eventually concluded that the answer is mostly which things are easiest to carry out of a house.

Item 3 — correction to file 002

Yesterday I described the 180-day provision as though every policy carried identical wording, which was sloppier than it ought to have been. The language I quoted appears in the standard form, but editions differ and some carriers write their own version, occasionally with a shorter window. Rely on the number in your document rather than the one in mine.

Item 4 — scope for this weekend

| ☐ Walk the house and total up what falls into those five rows. Coins and bullion. Jewelry not worn daily. The silver, if there is silver. Anything in a gun cabinet. Savings bonds and old certificates in a folder somewhere. ☐ Find the special limits in your own policy and set the two figures side by side. ☐ If there is a gap, the thing that closes it is called scheduling, which means listing individual items with their appraised values as a separate endorsement. Whether that is worth the premium depends entirely on what you own, and I have no way of knowing that from here. The word is useful mainly so that you can say it on the phone. |
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A fair number of people find no gap at all, which is a perfectly good outcome and worth five minutes to establish.

| One ounce of gold, 20 Aug 4,472.00 Category limit, standard form 200.00 Ratio 22 : 1 |
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Gold price per Fortune, 20 Aug 2026, 9:15 a.m. ET. Up roughly a third on the year.

Adjuster's note

Two hundred dollars was a reasonable figure when somebody first typed it into a form, and nobody has been under much obligation to revisit it since. That is worth keeping in mind whenever a number in a policy looks strange to you, because the explanation is far more often age than cunning.

I still have not called my own carrier. Day three, and I have now spent longer writing about the call than the call would take.

Monday: the four documents that decide most of what happens to your money, and why three of them get signed unread.

Read the policy before you need it.  
— Rita

| THE WALKTHROUGH · BUFFALO, N.Y. · SIX MORNINGS A WEEKNothing here is insurance, legal or financial advice. I am a former claims adjuster,not an agent or a lawyer, and I do not know your house. Policy forms, carrier practiceand state law all vary. Check your own paperwork and ask your carrier. |
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