Posted By:
MarkYes, it was a baseball card. Despite the thread on here from a few months back in which certain USPS employees advised that baseball cards were non-insurable paper products, baseball cards are 100% insurable. Publication 122 (on the USPS's website) lists certain items that are not insurable and baseball cards/papaer products are not among them. The Insurance Division promptly paid the claim once it reached them.
Yes, you have to show evidence of value. My case was easy as I had just purchased the card of ebay. According to Pub 122, other evidence of value (besides sales receipt/ionvoice) includes i) a statement of value from a reputable dealer, ii) a "picture from a catalog showing the value of a similar article," and "your own statement describing the lost or damaged article." Based on these statements, the number of dealers and price guides out there, I think value would be easier to prove with baseball cards than most other items. Otherwise, there was nothing unique to baseball cards that would impact am insurance claim.
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I will share something else unique to basball cards - if you're a collector/investor (i.e., not a dealer), the fed income tax rate on gain from selling a card held more than 12 months is not 15% (as is the case with just about any other investment). There is a special 28% tax rate on "collectibles." I'm a baseball card collector and a tax attorney and I only recently just discovred this. Dealers of course are taxed at ordinary rates.