I just recently dealt with jewelry insurance but I would not be surprised if my experience through USAA is different than then norm. I basically a couple of years ago lost the diamond and platinum with diamond and gold band antique hamilton watch that my mom got me when I got my M.Arch degree. At the time it appraised at $4450, which floored me since she paid about $600 on ebay but I wasn't going to pay for another appraisal so I sent it in and that was that. Well the clasp opened when I was wearing it on an airplane and i DID catch it but still managed to lose it anyway... I shoved it in my bag and then lost track of it and spent 2 years searching my house from top to bottom for it before filing a claim on it. I called them and since my banking is also with USAA, within about 6 hours $4450 was deposited to my account and that was that. I scoured ebay for a replacement and was shocked... I guess with the price of gold and platinum being so high, the only watches I saw that came close to looking like my old one with the same weight and quality of diamonds and same era and same watchmaker... ON EBAY... were upwards of $3k, closer to $3500. And I only bought this watch in 2005. I ended up settling on a different style of watch... platinum and diamond case but with a leather strap. I think the style is something I can wear on a daily basis and a leather strap is just way more secure than a bracelet ever will be (on the first one the safety chain did do its job for a while but I actually felt it as it slipped off my wrist and not as the clasp opened, but I suspect it had been open for a while by the time it slipped off). I bought it on ebay again, this time from a seller in the UK. It was $1500 with shipping (without the gold and diamond bracelet) but he sent an insurance valuation stating it was worth close to $2400 (everything was in pounds). I called my insurance company to add it and apparently under $2500 they do not require the actual appraisal, just a description (which I was able to provide). The total premium for the year on that plus another $10k worth of jewelry is about $90 for the year. SO WORTH IT for peace of mind, especially now that I lost a piece (and I cried over it for a while and tore my house apart and really only was resigned to it being gone recently). The other thing is they never took the old watch off of our policy so I asked them to do that also and not only did they do that but they also are refunding the premium we paid back to the date of the loss. It's not much, maybe $50 or $60 at most but WOW. I did not expect that at all, especially since I was dragging my feet on the claim. I was just thrilled that they gave me no problem on the claim even though it had been so long since I lost the watch! Stinkygardener, if the piece is not marked gold, any jeweler will be able to test it in front of you (even if it is they will). They basically rub it onto a black flat stone and then use a dropper to apply one of 3 acids to it and if the line stays bright and gold, it is real gold... 10k, 14k and 18k have different liquids. I think $149 is reasonable for what you described, amethysts are not very expensive and there is probably not a ton of gold in the setting. I can tell you from SELLING jewelery that they pay a pittance for it and it could just be that the guy has been looking at it in his case for a year and wants to get rid of it (and believe me, he is still making money!) Maybe I am also just too trusting but in general mom and pop stores rely on word of mouth and I would not be inclined to be mistrustful of a jeweler in that setting. I would be more mistrustful of a mall jeweler to be honest because I would not be surprised if the salespeople they hire don't know a thing about jewelry. A friend of mine owns an antique store and he told me he always prices things a min of 25% higher than what he wants because "people love to bargain." Sometimes he prices them twice as much as he'd be willing to take for it, and what he is willing to take for something goes down as time goes on.

spanky.... Lots of good ideas here. I like the idea of pricing my current coverage. Let's see what is it I dislike about our current agent...they have an answering machine and they're not afraid to use it [g]; the last time I left a voicemail, I did not receive a call back; last claim we made, I had to work it out myself with the insurance company, the agent was useless; they gave me the wrong information in a potential claim situation once; and they never review our policies or update us at all or call even once a year to check on us. We end up just renewing because our attention is elsewhere and because we haven't any confidence in the agent anyway. spanky...why does carrying a high liability keep the suit birds away? You don't mean it would discourage suits, you just mean it will cover you if someone sues you, right? I thought that might be the case with flood insurance. I am not in a flood zone. The last time we had serious rain, there were areas in my state that had overflowing riverbanks and towns that were flooded, but none of it effected us in the slightest. What about if you get flooded from an accident of some kind? Like a burst pipe from workmen in the street? Burst pipes in the house are covered, right? We aren't in an earthquake area either, so what if we had a freak earthquake? These days, to my way of thinking, you could get any kind of disturbance anywhere. Could we lose our house? We would still have our land, but we could put up a tent, right? [g] Hurricanes we do get. We are on the East Coast and have lived through many of them. Our house was built in the 1950s and never had damage from one though. When you say 'special hurricane deductible' ...so I would have one deductible for everything else covered by the policy, but a hurricane would be an exception and would be higher, as in a percentage of the total damage the insurance company paid us? I'll have to look into umbrella coverage. Sounds familiar. Very helpful..thank you very much. :-) pm2

It is true that brokers often seem able to circumvent the closed systems that many companies have. Many brokers have sufficient access to the information, so they can give the information necessary to appear they are also brokering for Company XYZ. So, it is true that brokers can get quotes, or appear to be getting quotes. To the OP: either web searching or through any other means, find a broker. Ask him/her what group, association, or whatever-they-call-it that he or she belongs to. Get that association. Contact them. Get a few more names from them. Ask each broker which firms they send most of their business to. No matter how impartial they seem to be, with their quotes, they will ultimately find ways to send most of their customers to a small number of insurance carriers. One way or another, you will be channeled into a small number of good choices. They may all be good ones. But speak to another broker. hth

In FL, where even inquiring about your coverage can get you dropped, it's a given, as Denita said. One of my neighbors lost her windstorm coverage after an inspection even though she has both impact glass and accordion shutters over it, because her shutters were put up before the rule that they have to have an ugly sticker on them certifying them as meeting code. She had the documentation, but on paper and that wasn't acceptable. This wasn't a new policy inspection, incidentally. There have been several scandals about how the ins cos here mandate inspections, then use them primarily for weeding. The inspectors about this time were given a quota of drops they had to make if they wanted to keep the job.