I agree with Tyrus that most people are very sloppy with their language when entering into a transaction. Insurance should always be discussed. Taking things a step further, people should think about how things are insured when they deal with auction houses. When you ship a consignment to an auction house is the auction house insuring the items? What is the value the items are insured for? Is this aggregate value broken down for each item? If you sent ten items to Auction A and it is agreed that they will be insured for say $50,000, and it turns out that one of the items is lost, what portion of that $50,000 is assigned to that lost item? Who determines that? If you ship a set of cards to an auction house and a few of the cards in the set are lost, how do you value them? Are you relying on the auction house’s insurance company to determine value, or are you relying on the auction house, or have you predetermined value? Most people don’t think these issues through and are upset when something happens and the results are not what they would like them to be.
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