A large pile of valuable knives is an invitation to a robbery. Knives bring top dollar on the "after market" and most are basically untraceable. Aside from the loss of potentially having your collection disappear, check your homeowner's insurance for more bad news: there's typically a special cap on loss by theft of "collectibles" often $5000 and sometimes as low as $1000. (BTW, if you also have guns, check that policy again as there's often another limit loss of firearms often very low.) You can have these limits raised for a very small extra cost, but that won't help you after the loss. There's one more real danger here: a thief will probably try to wait until you and your family aren't home. Hope that he gets it right as you really would probably loose your knives than put your family in great risk by inviting a criminal into the house with them.
Collectibles need to either be in a very secure safe (a serious safe that is very secure and very, very heavy, 2500+ pounds empty, and also properly bolted to the foundation of your house), or, if you can't afford or don't for some other reason want such a safe in the house, just rent space in one, a safe deposit box. You can typically get a nice big one for about $100/year. Would you like to get 25-35% off on that price? Then store some bonds, stock certificates or negotiable securities in the box with your knives (certain other types of business records also qualify), and the rent on the box becomes tax deductible.
Everyone who knows that I collect knives knows that I don't keep any significant pieces in the house.
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Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.4cs.net/~gollnick
