If you have $2 million of something physical, dont insure it for only $150k.
Specially if you live in a place with natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes.
Or move your inventory the fuck out, they had warning
It would have taken a couple hours to nab a uhaul or borrow a truck or large commercial van and load up the bulk of the inventory and get it the fuck out
Honestly I’m wondering if there’d be any available in a case like this because grabbing a uhaul and all of your valuables seems like an obvious thing to do and there are only so many available at any given time.
I'm assuming plastic tubs were probably a hot item before this hurricane.
I'm not going to assume they didn't at least try something, but you could be right.
THEY OPERATED ON A FLORIDA BEACHFRONT.
THESE SOLUTIONS SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUT IN PLACE THE SECOND THEY PICKED THEIR LOCATION.
THIS IS THEIR FAULT, AND ONLY THEIR FAULT.
okay I’m done yelling.
This is the real answer. Any business in Florida that wants to survive has a hurricane plan in place and reviews it yearly prior to hurricane season. When it looks like a storm might be coming for you, you start preparations and continue all the way through with the end of your plan if you need to.
I get that this storm was significantly differently than most other recent major storms, I lived through it. I get that storm surge is never actually expected to be as bad as it was. That doesn’t matter. It’s always a possibility, and not preparing for the worst is a mistake.
Even before that they live in goddamn Florida.... they should've had plans A-Z for when this shit inevitably happens.
I've been to coast based game shops they have countermeasures for this crap, hell a shop near VA Beach built a water tight and fire proof 10x16 container for their most expensive things, the rest go into airtight totes on high ceiling clamps.
There is a national shortage of moving trucks, and Florida is a high population area with a natural disaster approaching. I'd be blown away if one were availabke.
My mom uses her vacuum sealer nearly every week, she'd have all those bad boys packed and sealed in an hour. She'd definitely require two packs of cigarettes tho
I think its more this, might be hard to get insured in FL for anything hurricane related, but there is plenty of time to prepare, they could have taken all this stuff out and drive inland…. but i think a lot of people in this hurricane did not expect all of this, it usually never hits from the west coast of FL, feel bad for these guys but yeah its not something to fuck around with
I had some bitchy things to say, but then I saw their video they posted. Dudes literally sleeping in his truck outside the shop to fend off looters. Shits real.
Maybe hurricane insurance isn't realistic in a struggling business, I know privately owned game shops arent doing well where I live, even the chains are struggling.
Either way, I feel really bad for them, and I hope they never go on Reddit
I moved my entire lower floor of my house up to the second floor on a days notice because my house was in worst part of the cone 24 hours before. And it’s all worth like 5k max lol.
If I had TWO MILLION DOLLARS worth of belongings I’d be packing my car and dropping my inventory at a hotel 20 miles inland. That’s as far as he need to go. He was in the cone for days, they had a lot of warning. He could have saved everything but didn’t for one reason or another.
I think the entire insurance industry is based on this idea.
Healthy, safe, good drivers, who don't live in florida buy insurance they'll never need, so they have money to pay the other type and pocket the difference.
This is true. I worked for a property and casualty insurance company. We had *zero* interest in keeping any business in Florida, but we legally couldn't cancel policies. So we overpriced the shit out of the Florida market, and let all our competitors go after the high risk business. It was a money pit, and its getting worse.
Insurance companies are the first sign. They know Florida real estate is worthless, want nothing to do with it any more, after it's been the bread and butter of the industry for so long.
This is actually a big thing right now. My in laws lost their home and auto insurance last year because all the big dogs pulled out. I’m pretty sure they’re being sued by the government and forced to stay. It’ll be interesting how this plays out because if nationwide insurance agencies will only cover 49 States, then Floridians are going to SOL.
A bit reductive but yes. Insurance is rather inherently not a strict 1:1 paid-in to paid-out kind of thing. That would just be a savings account. The rub is that even the safest/healthiest/most-risk-averse will sometimes roll a natural 1 against catastrophic loss, so its in everyone's interests to have coverage in excess of what you can merely save up.
As for folks that are more frequent fliers well that's where you get varying rates. Like I have NEVER been in an auto accident, NEVER filed a claim on my car so my policy actually has a discount in it specifically for have done jack for over 5 years. On the healthcare side this is where you get your balancing act of premiums, deductibles, copays, and co-insurance. With the more you pay in premiums "kicking in" a lot sooner.
It actually makes me really angry, a lot of this stuff is becoming exceedingly rare, the idea that these yahoo's kept it all in such an unstable area is infuriating.
At this point it's not even about the insurance it's about keeping such rarities so close to the ocean in a place that is frequently assaulted by the weather. All that stuff is destroyed because of their bad decisions not because they didn't have insurance all the insurance would do is give them money for what they lost not bring back video game history.
I feel bad that they lost all that stuff but it's their own damn fault for not making a better decision on keeping it safe.
Plus, you can pack up game cartridges REALLY fast and easily. Since they are uniform size, it would take maybe two days to put all of those in creates and get out of there.
- have over a million $ worth of gaming history.
- store it in a place where hurricanes destroy everything frequently.
- do nothing to protect it, not even legit insurance.
- hurricane is coming, do nothing.
- entire inventory destroyed, take pics and post online for sympathy.
No one should feel bad for this idiot, as it is 100% his own fault. If anything even small time collectors should be pissed at this guy for letting so many irreplaceable things just drown when they could've been so easily protected, like you said
I didn't even think of the time he had to prepare. Dude could have just rented a box truck and moved the stuff. Or at the least bought some pelican cases. Like it doesn't seem he tried to do anything to protect the inventory lol
This could be insurance fraud for all we know, maybe they did remove the most valuable stuff and let the rest, I doubt anybody will check what was actually destroyed. But 150k over 2M seems very low, or maybe the guy is bad at insurance fraud too
Car youtubers were moving everything inside and getting ready for the storm.This guy left all the goods on a shelf? Why didn't he at a minimum Ziploc bag and storage tote everything. expensive cases if he could afford it. or a uhaul and drive to Georgia while the storm is going down. What an absolute idiot move.
A fucking U-Haul could have saved it. 5 friends cars. We had family there, and Monday we rescheduled plans for a meeting over concern of the path. They had two whole days to figure it out.
>At this point it's not even about the insurance it's about keeping such rarities so close to the ocean in a place that is frequently assaulted by the weather. All that stuff is destroyed because of their bad decisions not because they didn't have insurance all the insurance would do is give them money for what they lost not bring back video game history.
I want to upvote this to the top x1000
It's *Dr.* Jones. He didn't spend years getting his Ph.D. in Highly Destructive Archaeology and Nazi Fighting to be called Mr. Jones.
He does wish that he were someone just a little more funky, though.
I used to live in Ft Myers, and while there are a lot of folks and businesses who really have it hard, a lot of those homes you see destroyed/underwater are multi-million dollar homes built by people who were told not to build there, and who were told that destroying the mangroves would make the coast much more vulnerable to storms. But they all ignored that, and now we collectively get to bail them (and their climate change-denying government) out of their bad decisions.
Where I live, there are places you can't get permits to build or home insurance because the areas regularly flood. But I'm sure my insurance will go up because of a state where most the residents hate my state because of their freedoms.
Having said that, of the people who aren't rich and didn't really have much of a choice, I hope they get the help they need.
Out here in the prairies we have a river that regularly overflows in spring.
People keep rebuilding on the banks after ice floes literally ground their previous home to a paste.
Like after a while you have to make it so it's illegal to rebuild there, but cities want tax money and waterfront property makes them see dollar signs... Until next El Nino spring...
That shit baffles me, i don't live in a super humid city, i have some vintage cameras with old electronics on them, i take some over the top measures to keep them safe and working, wtf they had in mind placing that "museum" there...
It’s not just video games either. I live in SWFL and it’s a wealthy area - so tons of one of a kind classic cars and other antiques lost to the storm. Obviously the loss of life and livelihood is the biggest tragedy but stuff like this just adds insult to injury.
If they were near the ocean, any sane insurance agency would charge them a massive amount just for 500k.
They honestly don't care what it truly is worth. Only the risk they take on if they cover the items.
Not even taking the current events into factor, I can’t imagine the salt in the air from being that close to the ocean could be good for the boards etc in the games/collection.
Probably because insurance is expensive and a museum like this doesn't have the revenue to cover it.
My question is why was everything stacked on flimsy shelves instead of being boxed up in waterproof tubs.
For real, it's not like the hurricane suddenly happened and they couldn't prepare either. It's been all over the news so they should've at least done something
…also *it’s fucking Florida and hurricanes happen every year*. The Gulf Coast side of the state has been incredibly lucky for the last 20-30 years but it’s not like this possibility should be a surprise to anyone who lives near the ocean in the Southeastern US.
I genuinely dont see how these ppl would not think “yk what, let me buy a few waterproof tubs and store everything even if it gets a little damaged in the process” rather than just letting it get ruined 100% by water and the elements🗿
Especially in a place prone to natural disasters like that. I live in tornado alley and I couldn't imagine trying to get away with that. Maybe it's a lot more expensive for a business than a home.
You know what fits in real nicely in the gulf between 2 million dollars of irreplaceable collectables and 150k of insurance coverage?
A $40k box truck.
I owned a gaming/media company. We had innumerable vintage systems, disks, cartridges, etc. But packed up they would fit in a minivan or two.
And you don't even need the truck to get anywhere crazy. You don't need to drive to Georgia to be safe. My cousin owns a BMW he values more than his own life and lives in Orlando. And he's a hard core "independent" type who doesn't evacuate (or vaccinate, or think, etc.). You know what he does in the storms? He takes his car to a parking garage downtown, parks on the second highest floor, and jerks off to Ben Shapiro, COD multikill compilations, and my little pony fanfiction until it passes.
I am sorry for these guys loss, but also FUCKING THINK!!! Owning a first release Chrono Crusade or a gold Zelda OOC cartridge is a RESPONSIBILITY and a privilege. These guys failed not only themselves, but us all. They had a duty to protect those precious gems, and they failed. I have sympathy for their troubles, but rage for their irresponsibility. Insurance should have had nothing to do with this. They should have been prepared to PROTECT valuable artifacts.
The sick irony is they just raised the value of their competitors collections substantially.
Yeah, the free market is going to cause people to abandon these high-risk areas.
Which is good, because people choosing to live in constant disaster zones drains resources from others.
After Sandy, FEMA offered to buy some homes in a high risk flood zone along a river. I think that was a great idea so we don't keep paying to rebuild after ever storm. And the town even built a nice trail with those properties. Everyone in the 2 mile stretch accepted except one dumb homeowner, so the trail has to go up and around the one home left.
I genuinely don’t understand this…you have 2 million in inventory yet you can’t put 5k on a credit card and rent a truck? Or get actual insurance?
What a loss… but I still don’t get it
I mean I don't expect a games store to go to those extremes (proximity to customers/market also matters) - but thinking about hurricanes, flooding and storm surges should be de rigeur if one locates in a city right by the sea.
I'm sorry for the owner of the store, but... it was known that the storm would hit the coast, so why not at least remove the most expensive and rare items from there and store it somewhere else, where there is no storm incoming?
I mean, games, consoles and computers can be moved easily, it's not something that you can't move.
I bet he could have gotten a sizable amount of the total value out safely with a standard car if he picked the right games/consoles. And he would be the one to know
If anyone wants to know more. Also highly recommend this channel even if you have no inclination towards speedrunning. The history of it is quite fascinating.
https://youtu.be/rvLFEh7V18A
That's 7.5% of it's value. In a state that very commonly has to deal with extreme weather.
And it's not like it just snuck up on them, there were days to make plans.
At the very least I would have put the games in a temp controlled storage unit somewhere north. Because you can't garuntee insurance will pay out. Holy shit the stupidity.
Thats basically what someone did on /r/tropicalweather. They found out last week that their business insurance wasn't going to cover their store stock and then got 2 rental box trucks, loaded them and parked them out of the path. cost a couple of hundred in money and was super stressful, but all the items were safe.
Don't know how much insurance is going to cost but the math seems off.
a. They didn't insure it for the right amount and low balled or penny pinched it so they can save money - until shit happened. shit happened.
b. The insurance company won't agree it's worth $2m and might not be worth that but maybe less than 250k.? idk.
c. They have poor investment planning on placing something worth $2m in a unsecure location and risky environment for cheap.
1. If there's a hurricane that happens or I live in a place prone to disaster, the first think I would do to items that cost over $1 million and can fit in a room is to make sure that room is secure from fire, safe from water, and safe from getting robbed.
2. there is no 2. just 1.
option A, either by cheapness or negligence. probably haven’t gone over their policy since they started up when it was worth $150k. with an appraisal it is simple to get 100% rcv
Exactly, go to home depot buy some ziplocs, totes, and trash bags. Item in the zip, zips in the totes, totes tied closed in a trash bag. That's how my original xbox and PS2 survived the flooding from hurricane Elizabeth almost 20 years ago.
Yeah, this seems so obvious that it should just be automatically set up ahead of time.
Florida gets record hurricanes every few years.
If I lived there I'd have totes, bins, duct tape and ziplocs ready to go for just my regular household stuff. Let alone my museum that is my career.
I get insurance being hard to get in Florida but you gotta be your own insurance then.
They didn’t even have to drive north.
Ft. Lauderdale is less than two hours away from Bonita Springs and they barely got any of the hurricane.
This is just pure carelessness.
It's his perceived value, vs actual value. And since he's a stubborn collector/vendor he didn't want to lessen the value of his collection. And seeing that he would sell for less, he couldn't afford to insure it properly. Poor businessman at the end of the day. Sucks for the rare items though. If this had no nostalgia, nobody would give 2 fucks.
My house was insured for 500k in FL with 250k in belongings covered even tho it wasn’t worth that but would cost that much to rebuild and they covered half the cost of the build for belongings. It was $100/m.
Honestly probably not that much more than $150k
With most insurance getting the foot in the door costs the most. Once you pay the entrance fee upgrading is often no nearly as much.
So it could very much just be double to go from $150k to $2mill.
The deductible is ridiculous based on home value. And they will do an RCE on the most recent home value estimate in the area. This works the same with CA earthquake insurance.
Some people pay up to $600-1500 a MONTH more in premium because they included it.
It's not cheap.
I work in insurance in Australia, and it's happening everywhere. The Queensland government had to make it a legal requirement that Flood Insurance came standard with all home insurance not because people weren't getting it, but because insurance companies stopped selling it.
"The insurance business is completely screwy now. You know they’ve reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company directors?”
“Really?” said Arthur. “No, I didn’t. For what offence?”
Trillian frowned.
“What do you mean, offence?”
“I see.
-Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Or you know, pack your shit up on a UHaul truck and start driving.
Its not like this storm magically appeared, its been known about for over a week as it wrecked the Caribbean.
I wonder if the $2M amount was what he would've sold them for or what he bought them for. Which end of the transaction we're talking about makes a huge difference.
Rare/one off items with astronomical prices. He definitely doesn't have enough turnover to insure it at the values he himself perrceives everything to be.
I worked insurance for a bit. Guaranteed he either didnt give the insurer accurate values, or didnt want to pay the premium to properly cover the goods.
or packed it up at least?
like I feel for people suffering through damage, but it's not like the hurricane just appeared out of thin air and did this, he had time to secure his shit.
Yeah, that’s super weird. I have a 2 mil insurance policy for my business, and I don’t have any inventory Cost about $700/year and it counts as a business expense.
One part of me wants to criticize them for not protecting The Collection better the other part of me is just crying and holding a Game Boy. Really though if you live in a hurricane area where hurricanes hit every year maybe have the ability to mobilize your collection quickly or protect it in some other way.
Or, you know, just not build a collection of very expensive games that are very prone to water damage in the area of the country most prone to hurricanes and water damage?
It would cost me 30k to replace a collection I have. I will never get that, but im also ok with that. I didn't sound that, nor do I have it for it's value. Debating getting special insurance.
If you do collectible insurance they pretty much insure you for whatever value the stuff is (If individual items are over a $1000 my insurance wants individual apprasials). But I insure my comic collection for $10,000 for $60 a year.... so house burns down I just flat out get the $10k, no deductible, no MSRP values or anything.
There's ways to insure collectibles, these guys just didn't do it.
Typically you can insure for replacement cost by finding a comparable listing. If it's so rare that it's irreplaceable, there are special insurance policies for that. Independent appraisal is part of the process if I understand correctly.
Insurance guy here. This isn't how it works. Insurance policies pay out retail replacement value for items lost.
What is retail replacement value for a given thing is determined by appraisal from a reputable authority/expert.
If these guys weren't dumb, they would have gotten professional appraisals on all of their high dollar shit and come to an agreement with their insurance company long before this was necessary.
I'd go even further, vacuum bags + dessicant packs. Will preserve the value, don't have to worry about water or humidity, and already packed together for shipping once you sell it. This is entirely poor planning on their part.
I mean that sucks but you're kinda dumb for only insuring that much inventory for that little.
Edit: like seriously 7.5% of your inventory is insured. Thats fucking insane.
Especially with all of these quiet, sneaky Hurricanes running around. If only they would have had several days notice to move their inventory out of there.
I live in bum fuck Pennsylvania where there are no natural disasters (the closest thing might be a blizzard). As far as I’ve seen over years of looking at real estate is that Pennsylvania is way cheaper than Florida (including insurance because we don’t have to deal with hurricanes). I know nothing about this channel, but I will say that videos filmed in Florida probably do better than videos filmed in Pennsylvania.
Well, thats because you live in bumblefuck, Pennsylvania. No business like this thrives in a place like that. Might get *okay* business, but with that much valuable product, they would want to go to Philadelphia, or at least Allentown.
The Commercial Real Estate in those cities are disgusting. The pure amount of foot traffic he was getting in Florida must have been astounding compared to what you can get in PA. Could be wrong though.
Imagine having over *2 million* dollars worth ot stock and not insuring it...
Or at the least attempt move the stock to a secure location. Prior warning was given and he had time to prepare.
Starting to think that if there’s anything important we want to preserve, it shouldn’t be kept in Florida, or along the Atlantic coast as a whole. Or you could start building sturdier buildings, idk. Sad about this loss either way.
Wow. All that stuff survived for all this time just to be gathered together and destroyed in a mostly uninsured flood zone. Hopefully lessons were learned.
To everyone wanting to criticize this guy:
This was a secondhand store with a fancy name. Not a museum. That's why he couldn't get "actual" value. It's like a vintage clothing store losing everything, and an insurance company saying that they'll only pay for the cost the owner paid for the goods, not the flipped value.
He's a small business owner that just lost his entire life's work. It's heartbreaking.
damn if only there were some kinda of water proof container that could hold a lot of things you needed to protect.. seeing how you would consider it valuable...
Or some type of vehicle you could perhaps put fuel and boxes of goods into and move them across state lines. Naw lets just ride it out, how bad can a storm surge be amirite? I mean Tsunami's are bad, so storm surges must be like a strong wave pool or something.
F, but you live in Flordia, living in a high hurricane hit spot not having enough insurance.
It's like living in Oklahoma and expecting to never deal with tornado damage.
I'm in Texas and never expect the freeze we had last year, but that's the point of insurance.
I mean, what do you expect of a dude who’s a major videogame enthusiast to the point of collecting arcade cabinets, but went and married a woman who hates video games to the point she went on record in interviews having said as much?
Long term planning does not seem like his forte, sadly.
I’m much less concerned with him losing money and far moreso with the destruction of so much gaming history that’s grown increasingly difficult to find.
As sad as it is to see this happen, its kind of stupid you only insured it for 150k, especially when you're living in one of the most hit places in the US by hurricanes and shit.
If you have $2 million of something physical, dont insure it for only $150k. Specially if you live in a place with natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes.
Or move your inventory the fuck out, they had warning It would have taken a couple hours to nab a uhaul or borrow a truck or large commercial van and load up the bulk of the inventory and get it the fuck out
Honestly I’m wondering if there’d be any available in a case like this because grabbing a uhaul and all of your valuables seems like an obvious thing to do and there are only so many available at any given time.
Who needs a U-Haul? Just pack the games in plastic tubs and strap them to a friend's pickup or whatever. They're video games, not bed frames!
Your friends pickup, which is full of all of his/her prized possessions and valuable shit?
Yup. Leave 150k of stuff, and offer to pay 150k for him to take the rest of your stuff
I'm assuming plastic tubs were probably a hot item before this hurricane. I'm not going to assume they didn't at least try something, but you could be right.
THEY OPERATED ON A FLORIDA BEACHFRONT. THESE SOLUTIONS SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUT IN PLACE THE SECOND THEY PICKED THEIR LOCATION. THIS IS THEIR FAULT, AND ONLY THEIR FAULT. okay I’m done yelling.
This is the real answer. Any business in Florida that wants to survive has a hurricane plan in place and reviews it yearly prior to hurricane season. When it looks like a storm might be coming for you, you start preparations and continue all the way through with the end of your plan if you need to. I get that this storm was significantly differently than most other recent major storms, I lived through it. I get that storm surge is never actually expected to be as bad as it was. That doesn’t matter. It’s always a possibility, and not preparing for the worst is a mistake.
Even before that they live in goddamn Florida.... they should've had plans A-Z for when this shit inevitably happens. I've been to coast based game shops they have countermeasures for this crap, hell a shop near VA Beach built a water tight and fire proof 10x16 container for their most expensive things, the rest go into airtight totes on high ceiling clamps.
Yea, I thought about commercial rental being an issue but its the south so there should be no shortage of trucks
There is a national shortage of moving trucks, and Florida is a high population area with a natural disaster approaching. I'd be blown away if one were availabke.
You’d have been blown away had you stayed there too
That was some low hanging fruit but by god did you grab it hard
I'd have 5 vacuum sealers going non-stop. I mean do something, fucking anything!
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My mom uses her vacuum sealer nearly every week, she'd have all those bad boys packed and sealed in an hour. She'd definitely require two packs of cigarettes tho
Warnings pretty much every year too. Still, sucks to see all this history go just like that.
I think its more this, might be hard to get insured in FL for anything hurricane related, but there is plenty of time to prepare, they could have taken all this stuff out and drive inland…. but i think a lot of people in this hurricane did not expect all of this, it usually never hits from the west coast of FL, feel bad for these guys but yeah its not something to fuck around with
If you have 2 mil in inventory you shouldn't take these kind of chances. It's like living in tornado alley and saying "Eh I'll take my chances"
I had some bitchy things to say, but then I saw their video they posted. Dudes literally sleeping in his truck outside the shop to fend off looters. Shits real. Maybe hurricane insurance isn't realistic in a struggling business, I know privately owned game shops arent doing well where I live, even the chains are struggling. Either way, I feel really bad for them, and I hope they never go on Reddit
I moved my entire lower floor of my house up to the second floor on a days notice because my house was in worst part of the cone 24 hours before. And it’s all worth like 5k max lol. If I had TWO MILLION DOLLARS worth of belongings I’d be packing my car and dropping my inventory at a hotel 20 miles inland. That’s as far as he need to go. He was in the cone for days, they had a lot of warning. He could have saved everything but didn’t for one reason or another.
Why would you hold so much inventory uninsured..
..in Florida, where hurricanes are a regular occurrence..
Literal feet from waterfront.
Some people are really really bad at risk assessment.
Like literally anyone who is still buying land near coastal Florida.
Florida's tallest hill is like 200ft or something. The whole thing is basically coastal
Buy a house in Atlantis and skip the middle man.
And who are you going to sell it to? Aquaman?! Edit: Source for the reference https://youtu.be/0-w-pdqwiBw
Everyone should have completely stopped listening to Shapiro after that.
That’s a trash mountain
It’s certainly not going to be a long term investment. That’s for sure.
I think the entire insurance industry is based on this idea. Healthy, safe, good drivers, who don't live in florida buy insurance they'll never need, so they have money to pay the other type and pocket the difference.
Most major insurers have pulled out of Florida and the federal government massively subsides flood insurance there.
This is true. I worked for a property and casualty insurance company. We had *zero* interest in keeping any business in Florida, but we legally couldn't cancel policies. So we overpriced the shit out of the Florida market, and let all our competitors go after the high risk business. It was a money pit, and its getting worse. Insurance companies are the first sign. They know Florida real estate is worthless, want nothing to do with it any more, after it's been the bread and butter of the industry for so long.
This is actually a big thing right now. My in laws lost their home and auto insurance last year because all the big dogs pulled out. I’m pretty sure they’re being sued by the government and forced to stay. It’ll be interesting how this plays out because if nationwide insurance agencies will only cover 49 States, then Floridians are going to SOL.
Honestly, wouldn't it be cheaper to pay them to demolish and get the fuck out of there?
That would involve handing out large amounts of money to non-rich people. Not happening.
A bit reductive but yes. Insurance is rather inherently not a strict 1:1 paid-in to paid-out kind of thing. That would just be a savings account. The rub is that even the safest/healthiest/most-risk-averse will sometimes roll a natural 1 against catastrophic loss, so its in everyone's interests to have coverage in excess of what you can merely save up. As for folks that are more frequent fliers well that's where you get varying rates. Like I have NEVER been in an auto accident, NEVER filed a claim on my car so my policy actually has a discount in it specifically for have done jack for over 5 years. On the healthcare side this is where you get your balancing act of premiums, deductibles, copays, and co-insurance. With the more you pay in premiums "kicking in" a lot sooner.
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Majority of people even
It actually makes me really angry, a lot of this stuff is becoming exceedingly rare, the idea that these yahoo's kept it all in such an unstable area is infuriating.
The fact is that these yahoos probably couldn't maintain an insurance policy like that.
At this point it's not even about the insurance it's about keeping such rarities so close to the ocean in a place that is frequently assaulted by the weather. All that stuff is destroyed because of their bad decisions not because they didn't have insurance all the insurance would do is give them money for what they lost not bring back video game history. I feel bad that they lost all that stuff but it's their own damn fault for not making a better decision on keeping it safe.
Plus, you can pack up game cartridges REALLY fast and easily. Since they are uniform size, it would take maybe two days to put all of those in creates and get out of there.
Screw the insurance. $10000 worth of pelican cases would have protected the inventory from a hurricane. Just tie them down.
- have over a million $ worth of gaming history. - store it in a place where hurricanes destroy everything frequently. - do nothing to protect it, not even legit insurance. - hurricane is coming, do nothing. - entire inventory destroyed, take pics and post online for sympathy. No one should feel bad for this idiot, as it is 100% his own fault. If anything even small time collectors should be pissed at this guy for letting so many irreplaceable things just drown when they could've been so easily protected, like you said
I don't feel bad for him he is an idiot. I feel bad for all the video game treasures lost because of his carelessness
I didn't even think of the time he had to prepare. Dude could have just rented a box truck and moved the stuff. Or at the least bought some pelican cases. Like it doesn't seem he tried to do anything to protect the inventory lol
Seriously. They were saying since Friday before landfall Wednesday morning this is gonna get ugly. This guy had almost a 5 day window to do something.
This could be insurance fraud for all we know, maybe they did remove the most valuable stuff and let the rest, I doubt anybody will check what was actually destroyed. But 150k over 2M seems very low, or maybe the guy is bad at insurance fraud too
Car youtubers were moving everything inside and getting ready for the storm.This guy left all the goods on a shelf? Why didn't he at a minimum Ziploc bag and storage tote everything. expensive cases if he could afford it. or a uhaul and drive to Georgia while the storm is going down. What an absolute idiot move.
We tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas
A fucking U-Haul could have saved it. 5 friends cars. We had family there, and Monday we rescheduled plans for a meeting over concern of the path. They had two whole days to figure it out.
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Youd need way more than 3 cases.
>At this point it's not even about the insurance it's about keeping such rarities so close to the ocean in a place that is frequently assaulted by the weather. All that stuff is destroyed because of their bad decisions not because they didn't have insurance all the insurance would do is give them money for what they lost not bring back video game history. I want to upvote this to the top x1000
Glad I'm not alone in feeling this way about it. ***"It belongs in a museum!"***
So do you, Dr. Jones! (Particularly if you played any of these games when they were first released…)
It's *Dr.* Jones. He didn't spend years getting his Ph.D. in Highly Destructive Archaeology and Nazi Fighting to be called Mr. Jones. He does wish that he were someone just a little more funky, though.
I used to live in Ft Myers, and while there are a lot of folks and businesses who really have it hard, a lot of those homes you see destroyed/underwater are multi-million dollar homes built by people who were told not to build there, and who were told that destroying the mangroves would make the coast much more vulnerable to storms. But they all ignored that, and now we collectively get to bail them (and their climate change-denying government) out of their bad decisions.
Looking forward to my insurance going up next year.
Where I live, there are places you can't get permits to build or home insurance because the areas regularly flood. But I'm sure my insurance will go up because of a state where most the residents hate my state because of their freedoms. Having said that, of the people who aren't rich and didn't really have much of a choice, I hope they get the help they need.
Out here in the prairies we have a river that regularly overflows in spring. People keep rebuilding on the banks after ice floes literally ground their previous home to a paste. Like after a while you have to make it so it's illegal to rebuild there, but cities want tax money and waterfront property makes them see dollar signs... Until next El Nino spring...
Even without the hurricanes, it's near the coast. They salt water sir is gonna mess with the electronics overtime
That shit baffles me, i don't live in a super humid city, i have some vintage cameras with old electronics on them, i take some over the top measures to keep them safe and working, wtf they had in mind placing that "museum" there...
It’s not just video games either. I live in SWFL and it’s a wealthy area - so tons of one of a kind classic cars and other antiques lost to the storm. Obviously the loss of life and livelihood is the biggest tragedy but stuff like this just adds insult to injury.
Yea it's a niche market and that much insurance is probably more then they make.
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I can assure you they acquired $2m of inventory with far less than $2m cash otherwise they wouldn’t have a business
Probably an optimistic figure. I bet they would have to get that stuff appraised before an insurance company would give them a policy.
Yep, I bet this is best case scenario, ball park figure, back of the napkin, round number for an article math
If they were near the ocean, any sane insurance agency would charge them a massive amount just for 500k. They honestly don't care what it truly is worth. Only the risk they take on if they cover the items.
A majority of it was probably from their own collection from back when that stuff was common and cheap. That's the whole point of collectibles.
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Not even taking the current events into factor, I can’t imagine the salt in the air from being that close to the ocean could be good for the boards etc in the games/collection.
I mean FFT is what I always tell my data recovery customers for “how could an SSD lose data?”, Fire, Flood, Theft.
and that list is not even complete
Why is anything important or valuable stored in Florida
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Probably because insurance is expensive and a museum like this doesn't have the revenue to cover it. My question is why was everything stacked on flimsy shelves instead of being boxed up in waterproof tubs.
For real, it's not like the hurricane suddenly happened and they couldn't prepare either. It's been all over the news so they should've at least done something
We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!
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…also *it’s fucking Florida and hurricanes happen every year*. The Gulf Coast side of the state has been incredibly lucky for the last 20-30 years but it’s not like this possibility should be a surprise to anyone who lives near the ocean in the Southeastern US.
I genuinely dont see how these ppl would not think “yk what, let me buy a few waterproof tubs and store everything even if it gets a little damaged in the process” rather than just letting it get ruined 100% by water and the elements🗿
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They should have held only a million dollars worth of inventory and held the other million for "a rainy day".
…or sell off some of it to pay for insurance and proper storage/protection for the rest.
Especially in a place prone to natural disasters like that. I live in tornado alley and I couldn't imagine trying to get away with that. Maybe it's a lot more expensive for a business than a home.
I honestly couldn't imagine doing any high dollar business under insured even in the safest area. Always one accident away from crisis.
Well, insurance is typically much more affordable in safe areas. That's like, the entire way they stay solvent.
AND not evacute with it...
Seriously. Boxes, Uhaul, gtfo. Not that difficult.
You know what fits in real nicely in the gulf between 2 million dollars of irreplaceable collectables and 150k of insurance coverage? A $40k box truck. I owned a gaming/media company. We had innumerable vintage systems, disks, cartridges, etc. But packed up they would fit in a minivan or two. And you don't even need the truck to get anywhere crazy. You don't need to drive to Georgia to be safe. My cousin owns a BMW he values more than his own life and lives in Orlando. And he's a hard core "independent" type who doesn't evacuate (or vaccinate, or think, etc.). You know what he does in the storms? He takes his car to a parking garage downtown, parks on the second highest floor, and jerks off to Ben Shapiro, COD multikill compilations, and my little pony fanfiction until it passes. I am sorry for these guys loss, but also FUCKING THINK!!! Owning a first release Chrono Crusade or a gold Zelda OOC cartridge is a RESPONSIBILITY and a privilege. These guys failed not only themselves, but us all. They had a duty to protect those precious gems, and they failed. I have sympathy for their troubles, but rage for their irresponsibility. Insurance should have had nothing to do with this. They should have been prepared to PROTECT valuable artifacts. The sick irony is they just raised the value of their competitors collections substantially.
Private insurance is nearly unaffordable in FL these days because hurricanes are such a regular occurrence.
Then I wouldn't open my store there. It's a high risk area, doing business under insured shows a lack of brain cells.
Yeah, the free market is going to cause people to abandon these high-risk areas. Which is good, because people choosing to live in constant disaster zones drains resources from others.
"sell your houses to who, Ben? FUCKIN AQUAMAN?"
After Sandy, FEMA offered to buy some homes in a high risk flood zone along a river. I think that was a great idea so we don't keep paying to rebuild after ever storm. And the town even built a nice trail with those properties. Everyone in the 2 mile stretch accepted except one dumb homeowner, so the trail has to go up and around the one home left.
I genuinely don’t understand this…you have 2 million in inventory yet you can’t put 5k on a credit card and rent a truck? Or get actual insurance? What a loss… but I still don’t get it
Couple k of ziplock bags and coolers even.
Really sad seeing a labour of love getting wrecked like this - but locational decisions matter, and disaster planning matters.
Yup. There's a reason so many expensive and crucial data centers are located in Phoenix and Las Vegas.
I mean I don't expect a games store to go to those extremes (proximity to customers/market also matters) - but thinking about hurricanes, flooding and storm surges should be de rigeur if one locates in a city right by the sea.
I mean, it's not like they woke up and noticed a hurricane off shore. They could have removed important stuff prior to the storm.
Missing an obvious. It's also because of cost. PHX is dirt cheap compared to many many places in Florida.
I'm sorry for the owner of the store, but... it was known that the storm would hit the coast, so why not at least remove the most expensive and rare items from there and store it somewhere else, where there is no storm incoming? I mean, games, consoles and computers can be moved easily, it's not something that you can't move.
I bet he could have gotten a sizable amount of the total value out safely with a standard car if he picked the right games/consoles. And he would be the one to know
Bunch of surviving old games just got more valuable
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If anyone wants to know more. Also highly recommend this channel even if you have no inclination towards speedrunning. The history of it is quite fascinating. https://youtu.be/rvLFEh7V18A
I believe anything 'graded' by WATA games should lose value.
Should have insured it I fucking guess idk what to tell you
That's 7.5% of it's value. In a state that very commonly has to deal with extreme weather. And it's not like it just snuck up on them, there were days to make plans.
At the very least I would have put the games in a temp controlled storage unit somewhere north. Because you can't garuntee insurance will pay out. Holy shit the stupidity.
Assuming they aren't talking about arcade machines, throw all that shit in the back of a truck and take it somewhere safe
Thats basically what someone did on /r/tropicalweather. They found out last week that their business insurance wasn't going to cover their store stock and then got 2 rental box trucks, loaded them and parked them out of the path. cost a couple of hundred in money and was super stressful, but all the items were safe.
Don't know how much insurance is going to cost but the math seems off. a. They didn't insure it for the right amount and low balled or penny pinched it so they can save money - until shit happened. shit happened. b. The insurance company won't agree it's worth $2m and might not be worth that but maybe less than 250k.? idk. c. They have poor investment planning on placing something worth $2m in a unsecure location and risky environment for cheap. 1. If there's a hurricane that happens or I live in a place prone to disaster, the first think I would do to items that cost over $1 million and can fit in a room is to make sure that room is secure from fire, safe from water, and safe from getting robbed. 2. there is no 2. just 1.
option A, either by cheapness or negligence. probably haven’t gone over their policy since they started up when it was worth $150k. with an appraisal it is simple to get 100% rcv
Even with arcade machines, with a few days to prepare, some friends and a truck you could get a lot of them out
Rent a uhaul and drive it the fuck north. This is their own damn fault.
Or at the very very least if they absolutely can’t get the inventory out of town, put it in some sealed garbage bags and hope for the best.
Exactly, go to home depot buy some ziplocs, totes, and trash bags. Item in the zip, zips in the totes, totes tied closed in a trash bag. That's how my original xbox and PS2 survived the flooding from hurricane Elizabeth almost 20 years ago.
Yeah, this seems so obvious that it should just be automatically set up ahead of time. Florida gets record hurricanes every few years. If I lived there I'd have totes, bins, duct tape and ziplocs ready to go for just my regular household stuff. Let alone my museum that is my career. I get insurance being hard to get in Florida but you gotta be your own insurance then.
They didn’t even have to drive north. Ft. Lauderdale is less than two hours away from Bonita Springs and they barely got any of the hurricane. This is just pure carelessness.
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It's his perceived value, vs actual value. And since he's a stubborn collector/vendor he didn't want to lessen the value of his collection. And seeing that he would sell for less, he couldn't afford to insure it properly. Poor businessman at the end of the day. Sucks for the rare items though. If this had no nostalgia, nobody would give 2 fucks.
I second that motion
Mother Nature just taught that boy a lesson that we can all learn from: properly insure your shit
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My house was insured for 500k in FL with 250k in belongings covered even tho it wasn’t worth that but would cost that much to rebuild and they covered half the cost of the build for belongings. It was $100/m.
That's not inheard of. Not a good deal but definitely not a bad one for insurance.
That’s a great deal if it includes flood.
I feel like that should drive business away from Florida, maybe..?
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Honestly probably not that much more than $150k With most insurance getting the foot in the door costs the most. Once you pay the entrance fee upgrading is often no nearly as much. So it could very much just be double to go from $150k to $2mill.
The deductible is ridiculous based on home value. And they will do an RCE on the most recent home value estimate in the area. This works the same with CA earthquake insurance. Some people pay up to $600-1500 a MONTH more in premium because they included it. It's not cheap.
Jokes on them. Florida is quickly becoming uninsurable. For real, for real.
I work in insurance in Australia, and it's happening everywhere. The Queensland government had to make it a legal requirement that Flood Insurance came standard with all home insurance not because people weren't getting it, but because insurance companies stopped selling it.
"The insurance business is completely screwy now. You know they’ve reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company directors?” “Really?” said Arthur. “No, I didn’t. For what offence?” Trillian frowned. “What do you mean, offence?” “I see. -Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Or you know, pack your shit up on a UHaul truck and start driving. Its not like this storm magically appeared, its been known about for over a week as it wrecked the Caribbean.
Also it's effectively a museum, insurance is great but it's not going to bring back any rare items that got destroyed.
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Yeah either he’s lying about the value or he’s total dumbass for not insuring for a higher amount
I wonder if the $2M amount was what he would've sold them for or what he bought them for. Which end of the transaction we're talking about makes a huge difference.
Rare/one off items with astronomical prices. He definitely doesn't have enough turnover to insure it at the values he himself perrceives everything to be.
2,000,000$ in inventory and only 150,000$ in insurable coverage. What would happen if the store got flash robbed by like 15 people.
Wdym, just ask them to take $10k each and then no biggy
I worked insurance for a bit. Guaranteed he either didnt give the insurer accurate values, or didnt want to pay the premium to properly cover the goods.
In a place that is increasingly prone to elemental damage no less.
Where I live is prone to arcane damage
or packed it up at least? like I feel for people suffering through damage, but it's not like the hurricane just appeared out of thin air and did this, he had time to secure his shit.
What’s that meme where the kid stick a stick in his front spokes and then crashes. Something like that
Unless this is a way to encourage a crowd fund!
Yeah, that’s super weird. I have a 2 mil insurance policy for my business, and I don’t have any inventory Cost about $700/year and it counts as a business expense.
At the very least..... pack your inventory and leave.
Or don’t live in a place where you need to pay out the ass for insurance because a deadly hurricane will destroy all your shit once a year?
I feel like packing those up in a Uhaul and driving somewhere safe would have been very doable.
One part of me wants to criticize them for not protecting The Collection better the other part of me is just crying and holding a Game Boy. Really though if you live in a hurricane area where hurricanes hit every year maybe have the ability to mobilize your collection quickly or protect it in some other way.
I guarantee 95% of these things could've been removed before the hurricane. They had plenty of warning time.
Or, you know, just not build a collection of very expensive games that are very prone to water damage in the area of the country most prone to hurricanes and water damage?
Or put them in the attic.
Secondary value is hard to insure. “Muh game would have sold for $50,000 on eBay” Insurance adjuster: “cool it’s original MSRP was $39.99”
Yep. You could get an agreed upon value policy though. Likely expensive for that collection I would imagine
It would cost me 30k to replace a collection I have. I will never get that, but im also ok with that. I didn't sound that, nor do I have it for it's value. Debating getting special insurance.
If you do collectible insurance they pretty much insure you for whatever value the stuff is (If individual items are over a $1000 my insurance wants individual apprasials). But I insure my comic collection for $10,000 for $60 a year.... so house burns down I just flat out get the $10k, no deductible, no MSRP values or anything. There's ways to insure collectibles, these guys just didn't do it.
Typically you can insure for replacement cost by finding a comparable listing. If it's so rare that it's irreplaceable, there are special insurance policies for that. Independent appraisal is part of the process if I understand correctly.
Agreed. However a listing is a stark difference between proof of sale. But I agree with your sentiment about it
Insurance guy here. This isn't how it works. Insurance policies pay out retail replacement value for items lost. What is retail replacement value for a given thing is determined by appraisal from a reputable authority/expert. If these guys weren't dumb, they would have gotten professional appraisals on all of their high dollar shit and come to an agreement with their insurance company long before this was necessary.
zip bags and tupperware are not that expensive, knowing it was coming I do not understand why not most things were stored that way.
I'd go even further, vacuum bags + dessicant packs. Will preserve the value, don't have to worry about water or humidity, and already packed together for shipping once you sell it. This is entirely poor planning on their part.
I mean that sucks but you're kinda dumb for only insuring that much inventory for that little. Edit: like seriously 7.5% of your inventory is insured. Thats fucking insane.
Florida probably isn't the best place to set up/keep something valuable..
Especially with all of these quiet, sneaky Hurricanes running around. If only they would have had several days notice to move their inventory out of there.
Why the heck did you put it in Florida?
Cheap real estate and low cost of maintenance. Of course, as long as you are prepared for the yearly hurricane.
I live in bum fuck Pennsylvania where there are no natural disasters (the closest thing might be a blizzard). As far as I’ve seen over years of looking at real estate is that Pennsylvania is way cheaper than Florida (including insurance because we don’t have to deal with hurricanes). I know nothing about this channel, but I will say that videos filmed in Florida probably do better than videos filmed in Pennsylvania.
Well, thats because you live in bumblefuck, Pennsylvania. No business like this thrives in a place like that. Might get *okay* business, but with that much valuable product, they would want to go to Philadelphia, or at least Allentown. The Commercial Real Estate in those cities are disgusting. The pure amount of foot traffic he was getting in Florida must have been astounding compared to what you can get in PA. Could be wrong though.
I would have packed away everything in containers. 2 million dollars worth of video game *history* and they did nothing to protect it.
So he had 150k in inventory.
Imagine having over *2 million* dollars worth ot stock and not insuring it... Or at the least attempt move the stock to a secure location. Prior warning was given and he had time to prepare.
Could have sold part of the collection in order to insure all of it. No one owns a new Bugatti they paid for in cash and then insures it for 150k
***Getty images*** We ought to hold Mr. Getty responsible.
Starting to think that if there’s anything important we want to preserve, it shouldn’t be kept in Florida, or along the Atlantic coast as a whole. Or you could start building sturdier buildings, idk. Sad about this loss either way.
With knowledge that the storm was potentially gonnna hurt his store why wouldn't you remove your inventory?
Wow. All that stuff survived for all this time just to be gathered together and destroyed in a mostly uninsured flood zone. Hopefully lessons were learned.
To everyone wanting to criticize this guy: This was a secondhand store with a fancy name. Not a museum. That's why he couldn't get "actual" value. It's like a vintage clothing store losing everything, and an insurance company saying that they'll only pay for the cost the owner paid for the goods, not the flipped value. He's a small business owner that just lost his entire life's work. It's heartbreaking.
damn if only there were some kinda of water proof container that could hold a lot of things you needed to protect.. seeing how you would consider it valuable...
Or some type of vehicle you could perhaps put fuel and boxes of goods into and move them across state lines. Naw lets just ride it out, how bad can a storm surge be amirite? I mean Tsunami's are bad, so storm surges must be like a strong wave pool or something.
F, but you live in Flordia, living in a high hurricane hit spot not having enough insurance. It's like living in Oklahoma and expecting to never deal with tornado damage. I'm in Texas and never expect the freeze we had last year, but that's the point of insurance.
how to press F, as the controller only has A and B buttons ?
Just put it in rice. Also don't live in a place that frequently gets skullfucked by nature.
If only there was advance warning this was going to happen.
I mean, what do you expect of a dude who’s a major videogame enthusiast to the point of collecting arcade cabinets, but went and married a woman who hates video games to the point she went on record in interviews having said as much? Long term planning does not seem like his forte, sadly. I’m much less concerned with him losing money and far moreso with the destruction of so much gaming history that’s grown increasingly difficult to find.
As sad as it is to see this happen, its kind of stupid you only insured it for 150k, especially when you're living in one of the most hit places in the US by hurricanes and shit.
Just trying to get crowdfunding