I don’t travel in those circles. How are celebrities with a taste for having expensive jewelry at hand supposed to handle security? How much do you have to spend on a vault and a security system to protect 2 million or more in jewelry onsite in a house? If I have that kind of exposure I’m not sure I’d ever leave home.
Beyond that how do insurance companies handle this kind of risk assessment. If I was an agent I can’t see how I’d be willing to write a policy for millions in jewelry kept in a residential house. The risk would be insane.
Have to wonder whether it was an inside job by some personal assistant.
This was the plot of a Trollope novel from the 1860s, The Eustace Diamonds, where a willful (and admittedly unscrupulous) young widow causes a great deal of anxiety among her dead husband’s relatives by keeping the family jewels close at hand rather than in the safe custody of the jeweler.
It’s not just about jewellery, and not just about a few go-to celebrities that the media considers open game. A lot of people have things of unusual value in their homes, and insurance companies are aware of that, and offer a rider that enables a householder to cover such things. Insurance companies do not take losses, in day to day business, and they employ investigators who are very efficient and thorough, to guard their interests against unreasonable claims.
In this case, if the loss is covered, it is because the insured itemized the articles, paid an extra premium to cover them, and took reasonable precautions to protect them against loss.
Anyone else mildly surprised to learn that Alanis Morrisette owned $2mil in jewelry? I fully realize this is because my perceptions of her were formed two decades ago and, hey, more power to her – I ain’t going to judge. But I did do a doubletake at the thought of her dripping in expensive jewelry.
Yeah you don’t usually associate high end uber-rich conspicuous consumption style jewelry collections with semi edgy indy rock stars. But who knows, everybody’s got their thing.
The article I read said the burglars took the entire safe. I have a safe at home too (no, mine does not contain $2M in jewelry); it’s pretty heavy, but two people could carry it out, so I followed the included instructions for bolting it down. The bolts are installed from the inside of the safe, so unless you can open the door, the only way to free the safe is to pry it up. That’s not impossible, but probably enough of a challenge so that an ill-prepared burglar will give up and go away.
My guess is that Morissette had a safe that was small enough to be easily carried (like the ones you sometimes see in hotel rooms), and that it wasn’t actually bolted down to anything (or at least not securely enough to prevent it being easily pried up).
Not anywhere near AM’s value, but my wife’s engagement ring is worth about $50,000. We have it appraised and insured on a separate rider of our homeowner’s policy. No point in locking it up. The only time it’s off her hand is when she’s doing the dishes or washing her face. If it get’s stolen… that’s why we have it insured.
I never understood the point of those, as they seemed to make it more convenient for the robber. Now, instead of looking all over and rooting through various drawers, everything is in one nice & handy, compact place.
(I feel the same way about those small metal cashboxes that people use to lock up their cash at flea markets and such. It’s lockable so nobody can steal the cash, but small and lightweight enough that they need only steal the box… I mean, what’s the point of even locking it? If you’re in a position where someone can steal the money out of it, you’re in a position where someone can steal the entire thing. Never understood it.)
Anyway, most of my more valuable belongings can’t be stored in a safe without eventually degrading faster than they would in other conditions. That’s especially true with a fireproof safe, which is the only type we currently have in the house. So my “valuables” are out in the open with the hope that nobody would think to try to steal them.
I sort of assumed insurers would require some sort of minimal security precautions for valuable jewlery (or art, or comic book, or whatever) collections. Like such and such a quality safe and a home alarm system, etc.
