My feeling, which of course the shippers don't share, is that you can insure any box for anything you want, and if it is lost you are entitled to full recovery without the need to demonstrate what was inside.
If I want to ship a ball of string via registered mail and insure it for $25K, the maximum allowed, that is my prerogative. If you take the argument that I am scamming the post office because if it gets lost I get a big payday, then guess what: if I sent a hundred boxes like that hoping even one got lost, every last one of them would make it to their destination and I would be out thousands of dollars in fees without seeing a penny. Anybody trying to scam the post office that way is guaranteed to lose.
Now I have had a few first class USPS packages lost, and they have always demanded to see the invoice, receipt, or whatever can document the amount of the item lost. Why? I am paying more than I need to to ship something with insurance, so why would I add to my own expenses if nothing were inside the box? Hoping against hope that it might get lost? I don't think so.
Of course it goes without saying that the post office doesn't buy my theory.
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