What Happens When You Die

Collections are lost every year because nobody knew where they were, what was in them, or who to contact. A vault that holds something perfectly and is unknown to the family has not protected anything — it has simply hidden it more effectively than a drawer would have.

The failure is usually not secrecy but assumption. An owner assumes their family knows, because it seems obvious to them, and the knowledge exists nowhere except in their own head. Collections are lost that way far more often than they are lost to any security failure.

• Tell somebody the collection exists and where it is.
• Make sure your attorney knows, and it appears in your estate documents.
• Establish who we may release to, and on what authority.
• Keep the inventory current, so the estate has a list.
• Keep appraisals fresh enough to be useful for division.

Tell one person that the collection exists and who to contact. Not the details, not the access arrangements — just that it is there and where to enquire.

Put the same information with your estate documents so it surfaces when the estate is administered. Between them those two steps take ten minutes and they address the most common way a stored collection is never recovered.

1. 01Hold your written instructions on release authority.
2. 02Release only to the authority your estate documents establish.
3. 03Provide the inventory to the personal representative and their counsel.
4. 04Maintain records that make division straightforward.

Tell one person now. Not the combination, not the details — simply that the collection exists and who to contact. That single sentence prevents the most common way collections are lost, and it costs nothing.

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