Should You Insure Your Toy Collection? Pros, Cons, and What Collectors Should Know

Even with the rise in technology, many toys are still being purchased today. Toys are fun and help teach children certain skills to progress their learning and development. For adults, toys can take them back in time to their own childhoods and bring them great joy in finding that one specific toy they remember so fondly. In fact, one of the biggest groups of people to spend money on toys today are actually adults. Typically this is the case regardless but today many adults purchase toys for themselves to make into a collection.

Most toys that adults purchase today are vintage toys from their childhoods that spark nostalgia and are incredibly valuable. Some of these toys are worth hudreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars. These rare, highly sought out, old, and expensive toys get purchased and are so high in value that they greatly benefit from collector’s insurance. However, many people don't know all of the ins and outs, pros and cons to having collectors insurance for your vintage toy collection.

Follow along in our blog with us as we dive into whether or not you should insure your toy collection. We will mention the pros and the cons. Through this, we will note the little details that will help to see if your collection should get insured and will fill you in on some information that will give examples and facts for how insurance could affect your collection.

Join Us

Join us in our blog on insuring your collection. It is important to note that almost any toy can be insured as long as it has confirmed value and can be sold through the secondary market. Because of this, many items are uninsured that should be but there are also items that might be insured but people are unaware of the cons. Continue reading along in our blog to see these pros and cons for collectors insurance of a toy collection.

Pros

Collectors insurance has helped so many people in so many different scenerios. Collectors insurance provides protection against theft, accidental damage, transit problems, natural disasters, and more. It gives security that, if something bad were to happen, your prized collectibles would be covered.

Protects Against Theft

One reason collectors insurance is beneficial is that it protects against theft. Some people own collections that cost a lot of money and need that protection. Often, people purchase vintage toys out of nostalgia but also because they are good for investing in. Toys in pristine, or mint, condition with little to no damage in their original packaging often rise to incredibly high values.

These items are sought out by many people and can come in danger of getting stolen. If your valuable toy collection is not in proper storage it risks theft but even if it is, theft may still take place. Having the safe guard of insurance helps in the case of theft to take care of the issue and make sure that it is fully protected rather than the loss of a high valued item.

Different kinds of insurance are helpful. However, while standard insurance may cover only a portion or the cash value of an item, collectors insurance often covers the agreed upon value which factors in appreciation for the item which can rise the value. This is helpful if your items were to get stolen since they might then be covered entirely for their actual value rather than just a fraction.

Accidental Damage

Since many toys that people add to their collections today are older, vintage toys, these toys can go under significant damage on accident. Many different environmental and physical factors can actually harm your vintage toys. Sunlight, water, humidity, dust, contact, pressure, temperature, pests, and other factors harm these valuable toys.

The sunlight causes yellowing and makes the toys more brittle while humidity can cause grime and stickiness. Dust also damages items by causing them to get scratched or discolored as the particles build up over time. Even touching other items with your hands can cause damage from the oils within your hands or from accidently dropping items. When storing a collection, leaning toys against each other causes pressure that can harm toys. Other environmental factors such as temperature and any outside pets making their way in damage items.

Without insurance, you fully bear the cost of any accidental damage that may happen to your collection. You would have to lose that value from your vintage toys which is sometimes even thousands of dollars. Insurance gives protection when your toys get damaged to cover that cost instead of losing that high amount of money.

Disappearance in Transit

Sometimes your toys need to travel and cannot stay in the same place the whole time. For instance, during a move you might need to ship your vintage toys to a new location. Through transit, items unfortunately go missing all of the time. Although this is rare, items do go missing or even stolen through transit. Sometimes items go missing due to theives taking items.

In either situation, you are not able to look over your valuable items through travel which holds their own risks. You cannot keep track of them as carefully when they are being shipped which can lead to some people taking your items or having them accidentally go missing.

Insurance would be greatly beneficial in this situation since you would have coverage over your collected items prior to them getting lost. Without insurance, you wouldn't be able to expect them to go missing but if they do you wouldn't be able to preserve the value of your collected items and would rather lose value.

Natural Disasters

Another reason insuring your toy collection can be beneficial is from any natural disasters. Natural disasters happen all over the world and are typically unexpected. These include earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, tornados, hurricanes, wildfires, and more.

Each of these natural disasters can significantly harm your toy collection and even ruin it. Although natural disasters are rare and happen more frequently or less frequently in different areas of the world, they do still happen and it is best to be prepared for them rather than have one happen and lose the value of your entire collection.

Water damage can significantly damage or ruin paper or cardboard items such as the paper item listed above. Along with this, wildfires harm toys by disintegrating them and causing damage such as blackening from the flames and smoke as well as a permanent smell. Most toys would not be worth money, or much at all, after a natural disaster of any kind. Because of this, protecting your collection with insurance as soon as possible has helped people before anything happens to their items.

Protection Anywhere

Another pro, specifically with collectors insurance, is that it can protect your collected items no matter where you are with them. This is different than most homeowner's insurance which only allows your items to be protected within the home.

Some collectors, however travel around with their collected toys. For instance, some people have highly valued toys and might bring them to an exhibition to show them off. Another instance would be when someone is going to sell their toy so they bring it to an auction. The owner might want protection on this item while it's still theirs especially since they might have a buyer at the auction and wouldn't want it to get damaged on the road or at home.

Also, since homeowner's insurance only covers your items while they remain within the home up to a certain point, they might benefit from collector's insurance which does still protect them in the home while they stand in a display case or in storage. However, they will also be protected in any other area outside of the home.

Getting an Agent

Getting an Agent through an insurance company to help you is also very beneficial. These agents can help to answer any questions or provide you with an expert who knows all about your collection and what it's worth. These insurance agents can help to figure out which items need insured if not all of them are super valuable.

Along with this, these agents can help with any other specialized needs your toy collection might have. Since collections can sometimes be vastly different between the items within, some people's collections consist of items worth thousands of dollars as well as items worth twenty.

Insurance helps provide the necessary other factors that are often not thought about when looking to protect your collection. These agents typically know about the items within your collection very well and can help you decide what is best needed for your specific items.

Cons

Although there are many pros to insuring your toy collection and utilizing this insurance to protect your items, there are also some cons to consider. These factors mentioned will help you to decide if your toy collection should be insured or not. These factors are important to know the ins and outs of insuring your toy collection and being prepared as if you were going to insure your collection tomorrow.

Some of these cons we will mention in our blog include factors when using homeowners insurance, additional costs, and the factor of time. Continue following along in our blog to see the cons of toy insurance to learn more about the ways it affects your toys both positively and negatively.

Homeowner's Insurance

Although homeowner's insurance is great for protecting your home and the things within your home, it often doesn't completely cover super valuable items such as collectibles. Since these are some items that can be very fragile and easily damaged, most of the time they should be insured.

However, simply insuring your collected items using homeowner's insurance often leaves them not fully insured but mostly insured. Especially for very valuable items, they might only get insured for a few thousand dollars which could only be a portion of the value of your item.

Appraisals are often needed to add more protection if only using homeowners insurance. Even still, it may still not be enough to meet the total value. Along with this, homeowners insurance is less effective most of the time with collectibles and you actually lose value since your items are not covered entirely. If anything happens to your items, you would still most likely have to pay a bit of the price to replace it.

Cost

Another thing to factor in is the cost of insurance. Insurance costs extra money to protect your already expensive items which is just another thing to consider when it comes to insuring your collection. It would be the most beneficial to add insurance to your items as soon as you can which might mean that you purchase an expensive item and then spend more money on it regularly to protect it.

Essentially, you are paying more money in order to hopefully not lose money. Although having insurance will help you significantly if anything were to happen, it may be difficult to want to get insurance due to the other added expenses as well as not knowing if you'll actually need to use it or not.

Over time, if many things happen where your insurance comes in and protects that, however, you might be getting your money’s worth greatly and it can be very beneficial. On the flip side, though, some people might be paying a lot more to protect their collection especially if the items are not super valuable.

It Takes Time

One last factor to consider when looking at adding insurance to your collection is the factor of time. First, you will need to figure out how much each of your items is worth. This may include an agent or an expert to help you determine the value of items and how much insurance will cost for it all.

Though this process is valuable, it does take time. Getting your collection insured is not an instant process. You will need to factor this in and be patient while the items get insurance on them as well as figuring out all of the little details within.

Final Thoughts

If you have a collection of toys, it is important to think through whether or not you should insure your items. There are many pros and also cons to insuring a collection. Follow along in our other blogs about insurance to learn more.

Do You Have Old or Used Toys?

Don’t let your collection sit in storage gathering dust—turn it into cash! At Wheeljack’s Lab, we specialize in evaluating and buying vintage and used toys, from single standouts to entire collections.

Our friendly, expert team has decades of hands-on experience in collectible toys, so you can expect honest evaluations and a smooth process from start to finish. Ready to sell? Call us at 888-946-2895 and let’s get started.

About the Owner, Chris Ingledue

Chris is the founder and owner of Wheeljack’s Lab Pop Culture and Toy Shop. His vision has always been to reconnect collectors with the toys and pop culture that shaped their childhoods—sparking memories, nostalgia, and imagination along the way.

Each day in the “Lab” feels like Christmas year-round. From scouring the internet for the next great treasure—much like flipping through the Sears Catalog of years past—to eagerly awaiting the postman’s arrival like Santa himself, Chris lives and breathes the thrill of the hunt. Helping collectors around the world experience their own version of Christmas is what makes being a vintage toy buyer an absolute joy.