Agreed value, pre-move valuations and condition reports — plus the questions that separate a real antiques specialist from a general remover.
Antique moving insurance is the part of a valuable-furniture move that most people only look at properly after something has already gone wrong. This page is about the commercial side rather than the handling side: how to check whether a firm really is an antiques specialist, how to get a piece valued before it goes on a lorry, and why the standard cover printed on a removal contract rarely does the job for a single item worth more than the rest of the load put together. If you want the physical methods — wrapping, crating, marble, mirrors — read our guide to moving antiques and valuable furniture instead.
Almost every removal firm in Sussex will tell you it handles antiques. Very few will tell you what their per-item liability limit is without being asked twice. That single question — asked early, in writing — sorts the market faster than any amount of website copy. Our own antiques moving service exists because customers kept arriving with a Georgian bureau, a valuation from 2004 and a policy that capped out at a fraction of what the piece was worth.
A removal contract carries a liability figure and a per-item limit. The overall figure sounds generous — it is written to cover a whole houseful of ordinary contents — but the per-item limit is the number that matters, and it is usually somewhere around £2,500 unless you have specifically asked for something else. That structure is sensible for a load of sofas, wardrobes and boxed kitchenware. It falls apart the moment one object in the load is worth more than everything around it.
Work through the arithmetic on your own inventory before you sign anything. If the whole load is insured to a headline figure, and your walnut bureau is worth a quarter of that on its own, the headline figure is irrelevant. What you would actually receive after a total loss is the per-item cap, and the gap between that cap and the real value of the piece is money you are quietly self-insuring without having decided to. Most people discover this at claim stage, which is the worst possible moment to read the schedule for the first time.
There is a second trap in the wording. Household contents policies almost always exclude goods in transit while a professional remover has them, on the basis that the remover carries its own cover. So the policy you already pay for every month is not standing behind you on move day. Our terms and insurance page sets out how our own arrangement works, and we would rather you read it in week one than in week nine.
The fix is not exotic. It is to identify, before survey, every item whose replacement or restoration cost sits above the per-item limit, and to have each of those declared individually on the paperwork at a stated value. Everything else travels under the normal terms. That short list is usually five to fifteen objects in a house with real antiques in it, not the hundreds of items people imagine.
Three phrases turn up on removal and specie paperwork and they are not interchangeable. Getting them straight is the single most useful hour you will spend on the insurance side of an antiques move.
Indemnity means you are put back in the financial position you were in immediately before the loss — not handed the cost of a new equivalent. On a piece of furniture that has been in the family since the 1930s, indemnity is a second-hand value with wear taken into account, and it is very often a disappointing number. Market value means what the piece would fetch if sold in an appropriate market on the day of the loss, which for antiques means a saleroom or a dealer, not a general classified listing. It is closer to fair, but it invites an argument, because two auctioneers can put honest estimates on the same bureau that differ by half.
Agreed value removes that argument in advance. You and the insurer fix a figure before the move, usually on the strength of a written valuation, and that figure is what gets paid if the item is destroyed. It costs a little more in premium and it takes a little more admin up front, because the insurer wants documentary support. For anything genuinely irreplaceable, it is the only basis worth having, and it is the thing to ask for by name rather than hoping the schedule already does it.
One caution: agreed value covers total loss cleanly, but partial damage is settled differently. A lifted veneer or a cracked marble top is not a total loss; it is a restoration cost, and a good policy will pay the restoration plus any residual loss of value once the repair is done. That second element — diminution in value — is what people forget to ask about. A repaired 18th-century bureau with a new section of veneer is worth measurably less than an unrepaired one, and if your cover only funds the repair you have still lost money.
Ask, in writing: what basis of settlement applies to declared items, is diminution in value included after a repair, who chooses the restorer, and what excess applies per item rather than per claim. Four questions, four sentences of answer. If the answers come back vague, that is information too.
You cannot declare a value you cannot evidence, so valuation comes before insurance rather than after it. There are three routes, and they suit different situations.
An auction estimate is the cheapest and quickest. Photograph the piece from four angles, include a close-up of any maker’s stamp, label or repair, and email a regional saleroom. Most will give you a free low-to-high estimate within a week or two because they would quite like to sell it one day. It is a real number produced by people who see comparable lots weekly. Its weakness is that it is a sale estimate, not a replacement cost, and insurers know that.
A written insurance valuation from a qualified valuer is the document that actually supports an agreed-value figure. It is a paid piece of work, priced either per item or as a percentage of the total valued, and it states replacement cost in the relevant market rather than hammer price. If you have three or four significant pieces, a valuer visiting once and writing them up together is far better value than three separate exercises. Look for membership of a recognised professional body and ask whether the valuer specialises in your category — furniture, clocks, silver and pictures are genuinely different disciplines.
A dealer’s opinion sits in between. It is fast, it is free, and it is well informed, but a dealer who might want to buy the piece has an interest in the number being low. Useful as a sanity check, weak as a document.
Whichever route you take, date the valuation. Furniture values have moved a long way in both directions over the past decade, and a valuation more than five years old is treated with suspicion at claim stage. If you are also moving pictures or sculpture, our fine art moving guide covers how valuation works for those, which is not quite the same process. For silver, jewellery and coins, ask specifically whether the remover’s cover extends to them at all — many transit policies exclude high-value small items outright, and those are better carried personally or sent by a specie carrier.
Nearly every disputed antiques claim comes down to the same argument: was that mark there before? Without a condition report, it is your word against a crew’s recollection, and neither side is lying — nobody remembers the underside of a chest of drawers three months later. With a condition report, the argument does not happen.
A condition report is a dated, photographed record of the state of a piece immediately before it is wrapped. For each declared item it should carry: an overall photograph from the front, one from each side and one from behind; close-ups of every existing chip, scratch, bloom, shrinkage crack, old repair, replaced handle and worn foot; a photograph of any label, stamp, chalk mark or inscription; and a short written note describing anything a photograph will not show, such as a drawer that sticks or a door that no longer sits square. Ten minutes per piece, and it is the single highest-value thing you can do.
Take the photographs yourself as well as accepting the remover’s. Two independent sets, both time-stamped by the camera, are much harder to argue with than one. Keep them somewhere that is not on the phone travelling in the removal lorry. Email them to yourself; it puts a server time-stamp on them.
On our side, the surveyor records declared items during the pre-move survey and the crew photographs each one again in the room before wrapping begins, so there is a record from the day itself rather than from a fortnight earlier. At the unload we ask the customer to look at the declared items before the crew leaves, because a note made while the lorry is still on the drive carries far more weight than a phone call the following week. Nearly all reputable firms operate a short reporting window for transit damage — check what yours is and diarise it.
The same discipline applies if anything goes into store between completion dates. Photograph on the way in and on the way out. If you want the detail of how pieces should be prepared first, our note on preparing furniture for storage covers it.
Ask these on the phone or by email, before the survey. Ask the same set of every firm you are considering, and write the answers down side by side. The pattern of answers tells you more than any of the individual answers.
On cover. One: what is your per-item liability limit as standard? Two: how do I declare an item above that limit, and what does it cost? Three: is settlement on an agreed-value, market-value or indemnity basis? Four: does the cover include diminution in value after a restoration, and what is the excess per item?
On competence. Five: will the crew who survey be the crew who move, and how long have they worked for you directly rather than through an agency? Six: do you make crates in-house or buy them in, and can you show me one? Seven: what do you use between a blanket and a French-polished surface? Eight: talk me through the last piece you moved that worried you, and what you did about it.
On accountability. Nine: are you a full member of a trade body that audits you, and can I see the certificate? Ten: is my deposit protected if you cease trading? Eleven: what is your reporting window for transit damage, and who handles the claim — you or a broker? Twelve: can I speak to a customer whose move involved declared items?
Question eight is the one that does the most work. A genuine specialist answers it immediately and in detail, usually with a story that involves an access problem and a decision made on the doorstep. A general remover gives you an adjective. Our answers, for the record: we are a full British Association of Removers member, audited annually; deposits are protected under the BAR Advance Payment Guarantee; crates are made to size in-house through our custom crate service; and crews are directly employed and trained at our own training centre rather than booked in for the day. If you want a broader version of this exercise, our list of questions to ask a removals company covers the general move as well as the antiques on it.
None of the following proves a firm is bad at its job. Every one of them is a reason to keep asking questions.
A quote without a survey. Nobody can price antiques protection from a room count over the phone. If a firm will quote a house with declared items sight unseen, it has not thought about the declared items. A video survey is fine; no survey is not.
“It’s all covered, don’t worry.” Cover is a schedule with numbers in it. A firm that reaches for reassurance instead of a figure is either not across its own policy or is hoping you will not read it.
Subcontracted crews described vaguely. Ask directly whether the people on the lorry are employed by the company you are contracting with. Subcontracting is not automatically wrong, but you need to know whose insurance is in play and who you complain to. If the answer is evasive, treat that as the answer.
No crating capability. A firm that says everything can be pad-wrapped has not moved much original mirror glass. Ask to see a crate, or a photograph of one they built last month.
Cash discounts, no written terms, deposit by bank transfer to a personal-sounding account. This is where antiques moves shade into the territory covered in our piece on spotting rogue removal traders. A deposit that is not protected by a recognised guarantee scheme is a deposit you may not see again.
A quote far below the others. Antiques handling costs money in crew hours, materials and slower loading. If one quote is dramatically cheaper on the same inventory, something in it has been left out, and it is usually the time. Ask the cheap firm what its crew size and its loading window are, then compare those numbers rather than the totals. Our guide to choosing a removal company goes through how to read three quotes against each other properly.
It would be odd to publish a checklist and not sit the exam. We are a family-run Sussex remover and a full member of the British Association of Removers, audited annually rather than badged once. We hold the BS 8564 standard for international removals, and every deposit is protected under the BAR Advance Payment Guarantee, so the 25% you pay on booking is not sitting unprotected in a trading account.
Crews are directly employed and trained at our own staff training centre rather than booked in as day labour, which is what makes it possible to answer “will the crew who surveyed be the crew who move?” with a yes. Declared items are photographed at survey and again in the room before wrapping. Crates are built to size in-house. The rating is 4.9/5 across 120+ independent Google reviews, and the pattern in those reviews matters more than the average — read what people say about the difficult items rather than the easy ones.
If your move also involves shipping antiques abroad, the declaration and cover questions get a layer more complicated, and our international removals page covers how the paperwork differs. For moves within East Sussex, including the narrow-access properties around Eastbourne, it is the same conversation on a shorter timeline. Either way, booking the survey takes ten minutes via the online form, and the insurance conversation happens at that survey rather than on the doorstep on the day.
Free in-home or video survey, written fixed-price quote, BAR-protected deposit. Sussex’s family-run independent remover.
Declaring items above the standard limit is priced as a percentage of the declared value, not as a flat fee, and the percentage varies with what the item is, how far it is going and whether it goes into store on the way. Furniture is cheaper to cover than glass; glass is cheaper than a mirror with original plate; anything going into a warehouse for six months costs more than anything going straight from door to door. Ask for the rate as a percentage and ask what the minimum premium is, because on a single modest declaration the minimum is often what you actually pay.
Storage is where people are caught out most often. Transit cover and storage cover are separate arrangements. If your antiques sit in a warehouse between completion dates, check that the storage period is insured, at what value, and on what basis — and check the same for the return journey out of store. Our Lower Dicker storage is quoted with the storage cover stated as its own line so you can see it, and for collection-level holds the prestige steel storage rooms are a different tier with their own terms.
If something does go wrong, the sequence matters. Note the damage on the delivery paperwork before the crew leaves, even if you have not yet worked out how bad it is. Photograph it that day, in daylight, next to the pre-move photograph of the same area. Report it in writing within the firm’s stated window — an email, not a phone call, so there is a record of the date. Do not have the piece repaired before the insurer has seen it or agreed a restorer, because an unauthorised repair can reduce or void the settlement.
Then get a restoration quote from a conservator who works on the relevant material, and ask them to state in writing what the piece would have been worth undamaged and what it will be worth after their work. That second figure is the evidence for a diminution-in-value element. Reasonable claims on a properly declared item are usually settled without drama; the ones that turn into arguments are almost always the ones with no pre-move photographs and no stated value.
A last practical note. If a piece is so valuable that losing it would genuinely change your circumstances, the honest advice is not to put it on a general removal lorry at all. A specialist art-and-antiques carrier with climate-controlled transport and its own specie cover is the right answer for the top of the range, and a decent remover will tell you so rather than take the job. That is a conversation we have several times a year, and it usually ends with us moving the house and somebody else moving one object.
Booking your move with us is a five-step process. One: enquire via the online quote form or call our office on 01323 848 008. We’ll arrange a survey within a few working days. Two: the survey itself, usually in-home and lasting 30–90 minutes depending on the move complexity. The surveyor walks the property, photographs access points, counts cartons by size, and discusses any specialist requirements.
Three: the written quote, emailed within 48 hours of the survey. Itemised by line so you see what every cost line covers. Four: deposit and date confirmation. Typically 25% deposit on confirmation, fully protected under the British Association of Removers’ Advance Payment Guarantee. Five: the move itself. Uniformed crew, our own lorry, no agency labour, blankets washed between jobs.
For pre-move questions, our office is reachable Monday to Friday 8am to 5:30pm and Saturday 9am to 1pm. We’d rather have the customer conversation early than late — a small clarification three weeks before move day saves a meaningful misunderstanding on the day itself. For the wider company background and how the business is run, the about-us page covers it.
With declared antiques there are two extra steps inside that sequence. Between step two and step three, send us your valuations and your own condition photographs, so the declared values are on the quote rather than added by amendment later. And between step four and step five, confirm in writing that the declared list on the contract still matches what is actually going — people sell a piece, or buy one, in the weeks between booking and moving, and an out-of-date schedule is worse than no schedule at all.
Agreed value is a figure you and the insurer fix before the move, usually supported by a written valuation, and it is what gets paid on a total loss. Market value is decided after the event by reference to what the piece would have sold for, which is open to argument. For irreplaceable items, ask for agreed value by name.
For anything you want covered above the standard per-item limit, yes in practice — insurers want documentary support for a declared figure. A free auction estimate is a useful starting point, but a dated written insurance valuation from a qualified valuer is the document that holds up at claim stage.
Only if the policy says so. A restored piece is usually worth less than an undamaged one even when the repair is excellent, and that gap is called diminution in value. Ask in writing whether it is included, because plenty of transit cover funds the restoration and stops there.
Ask them to describe the last piece that worried them and what they did about it. A specialist answers with a specific story about access, materials and a decision made on the day. Then check the practical evidence: in-house crating, directly employed crews, a stated per-item limit and an audited trade-body membership.
Note it on the delivery paperwork before the crew leaves, photograph it that day next to your pre-move photograph of the same area, and report it in writing inside the firm's stated window. Do not commission a repair before the insurer has seen the piece or approved a restorer.