One of the binders is in a room with climate control in the suburbs of Ohio. It has Pokémon cards inside that are all sorted by set year and put in rigid toploaders. Together, they are worth more than a year’s college tuition. The owner has home insurance. He is a software engineer in his mid-30s who started collecting as a child and never stopped. He probably doesn’t have enough insurance to cover what’s inside that binder, though. This is a hole that the insurance business has only recently started to pay attention to.
For a long time, people thought it was clear: Pokémon cards were toys for kids, and standard homeowner’s insurance covered personal items. Most collectors didn’t know this—sometimes until it was too late—but most home insurance policies have limits on how much they will cover collectibles. This isn’t helpful for a collection where a single card could sell for six figures at auction. A 1st Edition Shadowless Charizard that is in perfect shape usually goes for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some people call the Pikachu Illustrator card, which was first given away as a prize in a Japanese drawing contest and of which only a few are known to exist, the “Holy Grail” of the hobby. There was no thought put into any of this when standard insurance was written.
That role is now filled by specialty collectibles insurance, and the products on offer have become surprisingly specific. Policies made for expensive Pokémon collections now include agreed value coverage. This means that the insured amount is based on the card’s real collector market value, not an estimate of how much it would cost to replace it now. That difference is very important. Most insurance companies will ask how much it would cost to replace something that works. Some types of insurance ask how much the item is worth to the owner and to the people who buy and sell it.
People who collect things think that this change has been coming for a long time. Graded cards, which are cards sent to services like PSA or CGC and sealed in tamper-evident cases with a number score for condition, have become the standard form of payment for serious collectors. A PSA 10 card can be worth more than the same card in worse condition. It always seemed silly to insure a graded Charizard the same way you’d insure a used laptop, and the industry may have agreed behind closed doors. It is important to note that the new rules only protect graded cards and not the grade itself.
Some policies have gone even further by adding features that seem like they would really be useful, not just fancy words. Automatic coverage for newly acquired cards, usually for thirty days up to a certain amount while a collector updates their policy, takes into account how collectors really work. Folks can get cards at trades that end over the weekend, at shows, and at nearby game stores. Everything is always moving. Coverage that can’t keep up with that speed isn’t really coverage.
There is an odd clause called “mysterious disappearance,” which covers things that just disappear without a trace as long as they are worth at least a certain amount. It sounds like something out of a detective book, but it’s about a real and frustrating kind of loss. Cards are lost when you move. They don’t show up at conventions. The thieves break into storage units and take everything, but they don’t leave any clear signs of how or when they did it.
What’s still not clear is whether the market as a whole knows about these rules. Even collectors who have been doing their job for a long time still think that homeowners insurance is enough or that the risk is too low to worry about. But collections that started out as hobbies have quietly grown into valuable assets, and it makes more and more financial sense to treat them with the same care as jewelry or fine art. For once, the insurance business seems to have realized what Pokémon card collectors have known for years: Pokémon cards aren’t just cards anymore.
