Just about anything can be insured.
Collectors know this. They spend a great deal of time and expense to improve their collections. They know the value of insuring their investments.
One of the more unusual things we’ve helped insure is a bottle of wine. The client was a wine broker, and traveled the world on behalf of collectors, looking for rare finds. On a trip to Italy, he procured a double magnum (very large bottle) of very rare, very old wine. It was quite a find!
Unfortunately, when the bottle arrived in the US and the crate was opened, it was discovered that the bottle had broken and the wine was gone. This was extremely disappointing to the collector. Of course, there was some consolation that it had been insured.
Anything can be insured, but the claims are not always simple.
What was interesting to our office about this case was the claim process. Of course, the client had purchased a policy to cover the wine, but there was more than one insurance company involved. They all had to tussle to see who would end up paying.
There was the insurance the seller had. Then the packer, the shipping company, the freight ship, and the storage company all had their own insurance. And finally, our client’s. It was quite a process helping our client get the whole affair sorted out.
And we did. This was definitely a time when having been around the block a few times in the industry really made a difference.