You finally secured your holy grail: an original 1981 Nintendo Donkey Kong arcade cabinet. You spent $4,000 buying it and another $2,000 having the CRT monitor recapped, the joystick rebuilt, and the artwork restored. It sits proudly in your finished basement.
During a brutal summer thunderstorm, a massive power surge travels through the local grid, bypassing your basic power strip, and completely fries the 40-year-old circuit boards inside the cabinet. The machine is dead. You file a personal property claim on your homeowners insurance, fully expecting a check to replace the $6,000 retro masterpiece. The adjuster arrives, looks at the burned-out PCB, and tells you it’s legally worth less than a used toaster.
The Brutal Truth: Why Standard Policies Deny This Claim
You are caught in the crosshairs of two major standard policy exclusions: the Mechanical/Electrical Breakdown Exclusion and the harsh reality of Actual Cash Value (ACV).
First, standard HO-3 Policies specifically exclude damage caused by artificial electrical currents (power surges) unless they result in a fire. The carrier expects you to protect electronics with proper surge suppression.
But even if the cabinet was destroyed in a covered fire, you are still ruined. Standard policies pay Actual Cash Value. They will apply 40 years of depreciation to the electronic components. They do not care about the nostalgic value, the pristine side art, or the fact that original Donkey Kong boards are rare. To the pricing software, it is an obsolete piece of 1980s electronics. Your payout will be practically zero.
How to Actually Protect Yourself (The Fix)
Vintage electronics exist in a gray area between usable appliances and fine art. You must insure them as collectibles.
- Schedule the Cabinet on a Fine Arts Floater: Do not leave this under your general personal property limit. Have the machine formally appraised and schedule it on a Personal Articles Floater for an Agreed Value of $6,000. This guarantees the payout amount without applying depreciation.
- Install Whole-House Surge Protection: A $20 power strip will not stop a lightning surge from destroying 40-year-old unshielded silicon. Have an electrician install a Type 2 Whole-House Surge Protector directly into your main electrical panel.
- Ask for an Equipment Breakdown Endorsement: Some modern homeowners policies offer an add-on rider for equipment breakdown, which covers major appliances and electronics if they fry due to internal electrical failures or power surges.
The Claims Adjuster’s Secret
If you try to claim an “original” vintage cabinet, we will ask for photos of the internal boards. A massive segment of the retro arcade market involves stripping out original, broken CRT monitors and PCBs, and replacing them with cheap LCD screens and modern Raspberry Pi emulation boards. If we discover the “vintage” cabinet you claimed for $6,000 is actually just an empty wooden box running a $50 emulator chip, we will adjust the payout to match the cheap modern hardware.
The Verdict (TL;DR)
The Risk Level: Medium (Old electronics are highly sensitive to power surges and are heavily depreciated). The Solution: Install whole-house surge protection and schedule the cabinet at Agreed Value. Estimated Cost: $200 for a whole-house surge protector; $25/year to schedule the cabinet.
Insurance actuaries have zero nostalgia; protect your retro investments with Agreed Value policies before the grid fries them.