You’ll never guess the household item with the highest insurance value

Pot plants are second only to artwork for insured items with the highest average insurance value.

When you think about insuring high-value household possessions, you probably think of jewellery, electronics, maybe your stamp collection...

But pot plants?

Evidently so. According to research from ING, a new entrant into the home insurance space, in homes where pot plants are cherished they have an average household value of $13,189! For context, only one group beat out pot plant lovers - art appreciators valued their artworks to be worth an average total of $13,787

Stunningly, nothing else comes close. Watches and jewellery lag behind at a pitiable $8,787.

"What this research tells us is that it's actually just as important to remember to consider the collective value of smaller items too. For example, the accumulative costs of all the pot plants in and around your house and your entire DVD collection. These things can really add up," ING head of insurance Cathy Duncan said in a statement.

What this means for you

When you take out contents insurance, it will offer general contents insurance that covers all your items for one overall limit (say $30,000) and offer you a specific amount of money for any one category of item (say $2,500 for jewellery and $2,500 for artwork).

If you have an item that's worth more than that, you have the choice to add specified contents insurance onto your policy where you'll increase the protection on a specific item by listing it on your policy separately and paying for the additional cover.

However, what some people aren't aware of is that a collection of items, such as CDs, trading cards and (ahem) pot plants may also have to be listed as a group if their collective value is higher than your general contents insurance allows.

How to find the right specified contents insurance

Here's how to find the right insurance to cover your high-value items:

1. List out all of your high-value items like jewellery and electronics and note their value.
2. Include the total value of any collections that individually may not be worth much, but together make up a sizeable investment. Examples are trading cards, comic books, stamps, DVDs, pot plants, rare exotic butterfly specimens from the Amazon rainforest... you get the picture.
3. Find a few insurers that offer general contents insurance and check what the benefit limits are on individual items and collections. You'll probably save money if you go with an insurer where all of your high-value items and collections are under those thresholds.
4. If you can't find any insurers that will insure all of those items under a general contents insurance policy, check which insurers offer specified contents insurance.
5. Once you've found a few insurers that will cover all of your items, get a few quotes.
6. When you decide on an insurer, you may have to get on a call with them or fill out a form listing out your high-value items, high-value collections and their values.

For what it's worth, not everyone is insuring their pot plants. The data just suggests that those few who do bother to insurer their pot plants do so because they really love their pot plants and have a lot of them.

If you're among this crowd or you collect any other unusual item, you'll probably have to ask your insurer if they treat your collection the way they do CDs, stamps and other collections. After all, it's hard to imagine a thief slinking off into the night with a $13,000 collection of pot plants under their arm.

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