Insurance-grade PDF reports — protecting your collection on your home contents policy

Most home contents policies in the UK cover named items above a single-item value threshold — commonly £1,500 or £2,000 — only when they appear on a separately scheduled inventory. A detector hoard, a single high-grade hammered gold, or a collection that has quietly grown over a decade can all sit above that threshold. The Premium PDF-report export gives you a dated, photo-illustrated, location-stripped inventory document you can hand to your insurer.

Why this matters

Standard home contents insurance treats your possessions in aggregate, with a single-item cap built into the policy — anything individually worth more than that cap is uninsured unless you’ve explicitly named it. The mainstream UK insurers and the typical single-item cap:

• Direct Line — typically £1,500 single-item limit, configurable up to £5,000.
• Aviva — typically £2,000 single-item limit on standard policies.
• Hiscox (specialist) — bespoke; named inventories the norm.
• Towergate — specialist collectibles wing; named collections expected.
• Saga — usually £1,500 limit on the standard product.
• NFU Mutual — rural focus; widely held by detectorists; named collection process is well-trodden.

If you’ve found a hammered gold coin valued at £3,000 and your single-item cap is £1,500, you are currently insured for £1,500 of it. The fix is to add the coin (or the whole collection) as a named item with a supporting document.

What the PDF report contains

Go to /settings→ Export → Generate PDF collection report. The PDF is generated server-side, takes 10–30 seconds depending on collection size, and downloads automatically.

Cover page

• Your name (as configured in your DetectID profile).
• Generation date.
• Total find count and total estimated value at the midpoint of each find’s auction range.
• The DetectID reference (URL + user UUID) so an insurer can verify the document was generated by us, not assembled by hand.

One page per find

For each find in your collection (or just the finds above a threshold you set — see below):

• Photograph. The primary find photo, scaled up to roughly half-page.
• Identification. Ruler, denomination, mint, reference number (North / Spink / RIC).
• Period and date range.
• Predicted grade. P–UNC.
• Diameter and weight. If recorded.
• Material. Silver, copper-alloy, gold, etc.
• Auction price range. The Premium range, with the comparable-sales count and date window.
• Identification timestamp. When DetectID first ID’d this find.
• DetectID identification ID. A UUID, so the insurer can cross-reference to the live record.

Summary table

After the per-find pages, a summary table groups finds by ruler / period / type with totals at the auction-range midpoint. Insurers like this — it shows you understand what you’re asking them to cover.

Filtering before you generate

Before clicking Generate PDF collection report, the settings panel offers:

• Threshold.Include only finds with an auction-range midpoint above £X. Default is £100 — useful for excluding the modern lead-shot end of your collection from the insurance document.
• Period filter. Include all periods, or only a selected set (e.g. Roman + Medieval only).
• Date window.Restrict to finds logged within a window (useful if you’re generating a report just for a recent hoard).
• Per-find page or summary-only. The full report has one page per find. A summary-only version (one-line per find in a table) is shorter and useful for larger collections where a full report would run to 200+ pages.

How UK insurers typically respond

Anecdotal but consistent feedback from Premium users who’ve submitted DetectID PDF reports to their insurers:

• Direct Line.Accepts the PDF as supporting documentation for adding named items above the single-item limit. Typically asks you to fill in their own valuation form alongside — the PDF is supporting evidence, not the form itself.
• NFU Mutual.Comfortable with detectorist documentation generally; the PDF is sometimes accepted as sole evidence for named coverage up to roughly £5,000 per item.
• Hiscox.Specialist collectibles; will usually want a separate professional valuation for items above £10,000, but accepts the PDF for the bulk of a collection.
• Aviva.Will accept for inventory; may require a chartered valuation for any single item above £3,000.

Private treasury vs named collection

Two distinct types of cover exist within UK home contents policies, and they’re often confused:

• Private treasury / unspecified contents.Pools all your contents under one figure (£50,000, £75,000, etc.) with a single-item cap. Adequate for the general detectorist whose individual finds are mostly under the cap. The DetectID PDF can support raising the overall contents value if you can’t justify it from receipts alone.
• Named collection / scheduled items.Each item listed separately with its own value. No single-item cap, but the inventory must be kept current. This is what you need if you’ve found anything individually worth more than the cap. The DetectID PDF is built specifically for this conversation.

How often to update

Two recommendations:

• Annually. Generate a fresh PDF every January and send it to your insurer to keep your named inventory current. Auction ranges drift; new finds get added; without a refresh your cover lags reality.
• After any significant find above £500 midpoint.If you’ve just identified a hammered gold or a high-grade Roman aureus, generate the updated PDF the same week and add it to your policy. Most insurers backdate cover from the date you notify, but don’t test that with a six-month delay.

A worked example

A Premium user in Cambridgeshire identified, over the course of three sessions, the dispersed remains of a 17th-century hammered silver hoard — 47 coins, primarily Elizabeth I through Charles I, predicted grades F–VF, total auction midpoint £8,400. He generated the DetectID PDF, emailed it to Direct Line with a covering letter explaining the find’s context, and within ten days had £8,400 of named-collection cover added to his contents policy at an annual premium increase of roughly £90. The Treasure Act process for the hoard ran in parallel; the insurance cover protected the coins during the months they sat at home awaiting FLO write-up and any Treasure determination. (SeeThe Treasure Act flag walkthrough for the Treasure process.)

Step-by-step

1. Sign in. Go to /settings.
2. Scroll to the Export your collection panel.
3. Click Generate PDF collection report.
4. Set your filters — threshold, period, date window, full or summary.
5. Click Generate. Wait 10–30 seconds.
6. The PDF downloads. Save it with a dated filename (e.g. detectid-collection-2026-05-19.pdf).
7. Email to your insurer alongside whatever form they ask you to fill in.
8. Diary a reminder for the same date next year.

Privacy and data hygiene

• The PDF contains no location data. None.
• Insurers receive the same identification information any auction house would publish about the same coin.
• DetectID does not share generated PDFs with anyone — once downloaded, the file lives on your machine.
• If you delete the find from DetectID later, the find ID in the PDF stops resolving on our side. The PDF itself is still a valid historical document.

Next steps

• Reading auction valuations — the price ranges that drive the report.
• KML and CSV export — the other Premium exports.
• The Treasure Act flag walkthrough — for finds that the report covers but Treasure law also touches.