Help with valuing fire losses of Brandon works

[borborygmus]

I need Sharder help if possible figuring out some tough stuff, if anyone is willing to help me out.

Some background for what is going on - on Monday I suffered a catastrophic house fire. It caught fire while I was at work in the middle of doing surgery while my best friend & life partner (and vet nurse) was running anesthesia. The structure was completely destroyed - this is what remains https://bloomingtonian.com/2020/03/09/house-burns-on-w-mallory-road/ Our five dogs, our cat and everything that I ever owned in my life as well as everything that my partner ever owned were all lost in the fire. We are devastated. The losses are unimaginable. Some things can never be replaced, our animals are the worst of it all. We had a 3 year old moggy cat, a 1.5 year old Lab-mutt, an 8 month old Malamute-mutt and 3 dachshund puppies only 4-6 months old all of whom were trapped in the house. Other things like the heirloom violin passed down in my family through the maternal line are also not possible to replace even with equivalent value. We have lost our childhood stuffed animals, our documents of identification and financial records, diplomas, photograph albums, our textbooks and school notes, literally everything is ashes. Our lives are gone. They burned away in less than 30 minutes.

Insurance covers our lost belongings at replacement value and wants us to list the things that we have lost and value them. For some things that are harder to value such as antiques we have to have some kind of third party appraisal. We have to figure out the contents and value of our library books and try to list them, some we will never have any idea about such as the collection of old roleplaying game manuals, out of print novels, &c. The entire task is massively overwhelming and painful as at each turn we are realizing more that we have lost and can never find again.

Part of our library that we had and treasured was first edition copies of basically everything Brandon has ever written, except for Elantris which we were not early enough to the party to get on first edition - we had had all his Cosmere works signed, although we did not pursue signings for the other works, and had also a copy of the Name of the Wind signed by Brandon and Way of Kings signed by Patrick Rothfuss. We had all the leatherbound books that are no longer available on his store. We each had a Cosmere pin and a Hoid card from GenCon 50. The last two hold only emotional value and not monetary value, but the others all held considerable value and all of them would be hard or impossible to replace now. We don't know how to value them for insurance. We don't know how to get replacements for any of them. We are lost on this and the whole task is overwhelming, I hoped that 17th Sharders might help us in trying to figure out an appraisal value and guide us in finding these things (or sell to us if you need extra pocket money although I can't imagine anyone selling these once they had them).

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read and consider this - and if you can help us out we are extremely grateful.

[Honorless]

That's rough man. Have you considered e-mailing the Dragonsteel team themselves?

[+ILuvHats]

Sounds like you’re going through some pretty terrible times right now. My best wishes for you and your partner going forward. I would probably follow Dreamer’s advice and email dragonsteel directly; they can help you a lot more than most sharders can.

[Mason Wheeler]

Oh wow, that's rough!  I hope you're able to pull through!

Valuing stuff like this is always tricky.  Probably your best bet would be to look on ebay and see if any similar items are selling, and at what price.

[Bookish Ocelot]

I'm so sorry for your loss. 

I don't know how much those would be worth. I'd think current price +10-15%? Best bet is to probably check Ebay and/or email dragonsteel.