Do you know what your collection is worth? If you have a large collection of anything, you should know its value. For that matter you have a responsibility to yourself and the collection for just that. Today I’m going to show you why it’s important and options on how to take care of it. So get on in here for some more of my Wilde information!

Why is it so important to know the value of your HeroClix collection? I have one word for that; insurance. Home invasion, tornado, flood, fire, earthquake, and who knows what else can cause the loss of your hard built collection. You put a lot of your hard earned cash into that collection; all the more reason to protect it.


Let me share a story with you. I had a collection of over 30,000 Marvel and DC Overpower cards. If you never heard of it, that’s probably because the game died out about 10 years ago. We were living under housing because times were hard but it was actually a nice duplex. Because of some fault in the house’s basement drain pipes, the basement flooded and destroyed the whole collection. By a stroke of luck, the Housing departments insurance agree to handle our damages. Now, there was no price guide for Overpower cards. The insurance agent had to research CCG’s because he’d never heard of them before. Since he found out that CCG’s are worth money, the company took a sort of middle ground with us and I got 2000 dollars for my collection. I put that into HeroClix, MTG, and bills instead. Not bad for a collection that we couldn’t prove value on at the time. Except that they did research Ebay and found Overpower selling there.


So how do you insure your collection? If you own your home, you should have home owners insurance. Your collections, as part of your property, should be covered. You will still want to keep a file, and I’ll explain that in a moment. If you rent, you can get renter’s insurance from the same place you get your car insurance. Renter’s insurance is usually about the lowest cost insurance you can get and it covers you well, even against robberies. Get insured, it’s a smart idea. You may or may not have to list items right away (usually you don’t). But that’s why you’ll have that file.


That brings us to how you can scope out the value of your collection. You have a few options.


One thing you must do is create a home file. You need to be able to prove that your collection has value. In that file you need to keep a list of resources that you can print out and give to your insurance agent. These resources will be online locations and local stores the agent can look up. Online stores are great resources because they are at your fingertips in a flash. Oh, and we can’t forget to add HCRealms to that list either. Anything that can prove that your collection has value is important. That is the first thing an agent will research. You also do this to make sure your collection stands out and away from any generic property you have like your kids toys or your clothes. Many of these things have a set allowance of what the insurance company will pay so you can get new clothes or toys for your kid. You don’t want your collection lumped in with anything else. Your collection is likely worth more than all your clothes combined. For that matter, my collection is worth more than my clothes and furniture combined. I have nice furniture too.


How to get the value. You should check the value of your collection at least once a year. Add your new sets and check values on prior ones. One option you have is right here at HCRealms. Most of you should already know you can put your collection into the database under your user name in the Units section of the site. Yours truly is working on pulling down prices and submitting them to the website to help out. Not a short process, but there are already some values available.


To do work yourself, you might want to use a spreadsheet program and make a separate page for each names set of your collection that you have. It’s a big undertaking to make those files, but very rewarding to have on hand. If you can’t manage spread sheet, you can fall back to the hard way in a word processing program. Currently, I have to say that HCRealms is an awesome way to keep track of your collection! If you haven’t already, check it out.


Now what about those values? Chances are that an insurance company will want to look at more than one source of prices. You should beat them to the punch on that one. Let’s face it, they don’t want to give you any more money than they absolutely have to. So they are going to aim for an average or low. You want to aim at the closest to a fair market value that you can! This requires research for your home files. I’m currently compiling a comparison list that I will be submitting here. That list will show values from the most popular online purchasing areas. What you do is get the average of what each piece of your collection sells for and list that in your personal records. This is why I said spreadsheet, people.


What sites should you look at? You should collect information from websites that list sets (especially if they list entire set) and take down information on what they charge for each piece. Yes that's a heck of a process. You want to gather information and then figure out the average value based on what you find.

How to get an average: Say you collect information on one piece from three different websites. Add those three values together and then divide by 3. The result will be the average. It all depends on how many values you add together. If you add 5 values together, then divide by 5.


So hopefully, this has opened your eyes to the importance of knowing your values. Now you can take up your own home project of listing your figures and protecting your collection. Got questions? Fire away and keep on clixin!

Interesting thought: insuring your HeroClix. Thanks for the thought-provoking article.

I was an avid player of Overpower. Had all the cards. Yes, me being a completist is nothing new to Heroclix.

Last year I was able to get $1,500 for all of my cards. So you weren't too far off.

As an insurance professional for nearly 10 years, there are lots of good points in her folks - I know many companies will also allow for a video of your stuff. That combined with your have/want list here should do the trick.

my collection is worth around 2000 dollars at the moment. not too bad for guy who had to part with it twice before. got back everything I had sold before and then some. I wouldn't sell it again even if I was homeless! haha

Don't go there.
Ten grand.
Wouldn't insure it for less than 15 grand.
Any takers?

Thanks and well said. I didn't know about the video. I would have thought photo maybe, but cool.

While your homeowner's or renter's insurance will likely cover your collection, you might also consider actually insuring your collection via a collectibles insurance policy. These policies are designed specifically for collectibles and you would likely get a better settlement.

Nice article. Insurance is important.

my collection over the years has grown 10 times what I payed for it thanks to friends moving and giving me there crap. So I have tons of extra stuff of all lvls. But to me my collection is priceless. If I had to put a value on it I would say.........one million dollars!....... well maybe about 5 grand

Now if only I could find someone to trade me their VS cards for my extra Heroclix SRs/Chases. Card games are just SO much more convenient, fast, and cheap :-/ sigh

Nice article. OverPower rep for you. I can't bring myself to sell my collection even though I haven't played in years. I had a ton of fun playing that game and ruled the tournament scene in my area for a long time. I was able to bring some of my OverPower players into Heroclix. Believe it or not, there are still groups of people that still play OP on a regular basis. I know of one in Canada. I would love to play again.

My Overpower collection was moisture damaged when I left it in storage in a second building on my property. I never thought to look into insurance reimbursement, as it wasn't a catastrophe or anything. I wonder if that would have been the right move...

After reading this, I brought the matter up to my wife, and we're going to talk with our insurance provider at some point to get all that handled. I have Heroclix, Star Wars CCG, Dragonball Z CCG, and Pirates of the Spanish Main; those collections should be insured!

Though I'm dreading doing an index for the card games...

That's another thing our collections have, personal value and sentimental value. Unfortunately the insurance companies won't go for that. They can't afford it.