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Sure this will have been discussed before but................

Is there any professional body that someone knows of in the UK, who can give an insurance valuation for painted armies. Take my GW Ork Army. I can go online and print all the models out to gain a cost of the items and match these with the photo's I have, but this army I've spend 3 years painting it all to a VERY high standard. If it was lost, I'd have to pay someone serious ££££ to replace it to the same standard.

I can go to various insurance companies, they will all insure under a seperate policy my army collection, but without a valuation, they will only pay out the cost to buy unpainted, not the cost to pay for a pro-painted army (which mine are). Someone insurer said to me they will only pay out the vaule it cost me to buy, but that's not true..........

Take for example someone who bough a SW figure back in the day for £1. That same figure now could be woth £1000, and that is what the isurance would pay out. The only difference is that you can get a 'toy' collection valued, but not a collection painted by yourself??

I think the issue here is assigning value to your labour, you could potentially keep reciepts for the paints, brushes used in the painting of your miniatures essentially making them worth the sum of the total cost of them having been painted. However the value added for your painting is highly subjective, and i do not believe there is an institutuon that would value the painting of the miniatures as art. However if they had been painted by a commission service and you had paperwork and reciepts for such then you could prove the value of the item by process of reciepts.

Pretty much the above, also if possible, try and make sure you get it under your home and contents insurance, no need to pay for a whole seperate policy if you don't.

Might want to look around at the different related hobbies in the UK.

I have my collections insured under my homeowner's policy for basic replacement costs, as well as a secondary policy through the NMRA which covers more complex items and has a valuation beyond basic replacement.

I seem to recall seeing something similar either through IPMS or possibly Society of Ancients. Although they are not strictly models, trains or historicals - most of these insurance policies are specifically designed to deal with the unique nature of hobbies in general, not specifically those items. As a result, your armies may be categorized as a collection of scale models, while dioramas and game boards fall into the model layout category.

Would perhaps classifying it as art in some way work? Or, say you were to paint a few items on commission and maintain records of hours/pounds spent, then back catalog what you spent painting your army? Surely an artist would insure those works kept at home, same as a craftsman of some sort.