[genewitch]

homeowner's insurance approaches this if you know your agent (as in you've physically seen them) and the two of you have an understanding that you're going to be recording the purchase price (or market price, whichever is lower), date of purchase, serial numbers, and any other identification of all objects you want insured. If you do this, my understanding is that they cannot then do "replace toaster: $8; replace TV, Onn brand 42inch $170;" and so on. If your item's market price goes up in the meantime, the policy will have verbiage as to how that gets resolved. For example if i have a policy on something that is no longer being made, i can either be reimbursed for the price or a suitable replacement.

Generic, cookie-cutter, boilerplate policies probably net the insurance companies a fair amount of profit. People who actually care about the actual items they are insuring are possibly the highest risk, and as such, the premiums are also the highest. In my state, an umbrella policy that would cover my home, land, frontage, vehicles, farm equipment, well pump, etc is ~$500/month, with limits of around $1mm (this was 8 years ago or so, they probably went up in premiums). a half million on two vehicles is only about $200/month and homeowners varies but is ~<$100/month. The issue is how i'd get the rest of the stuff i said insured, because in my state, the homeowner's policy doesn't cover anything but the home (and contents to a limited extent) and whatever you call a tree on your property falling down and causing injury or damage not due to negligence.