Dear Colleagues Would anyone be willing to share with me their experience with providing good faith cost-evaluations of teaching and research collections for the purposes of insurance premiums? Museum curators and collectors probably have a more well-tuned sense of market value of specimens, but for those responsible for academic collections (teaching and research), is there any consensus on how to approach valuations? A fist-sized piece of rock used in mineral, rock and texture teaching environments may appear to have little monetary value as rock, but, it takes time and resources to build collections and accumulate the diversity of samples that many of us are fortunate to have in our collections. These costs are magnified when research collections are considered, especially if it took significant financial resources to get to some of the more remote places of world where some unique collections are taken. Any thoughts or perspectives on how to approach this task, or indeed, recommendations on resources or documents describing best-practices for such tasks would be greatly appreciated. Callum Callum J. Hetherington, PhD Chair, Department of Geosciences Texas Tech University Box 41053 Lubbock, TX 79410-1053 USA IRES - Study Abroad in South Africa - Program Co-Leader (southafrica.geosciences.ttu.edu) PI South Plains STEM Scholarship Program - (http://www.depts.ttu.edu/artsandsciences/spss/index.php) Director, College of Arts & Sciences Microscopy (http://www.depts.ttu.edu/casm/) Associate Editor, American Mineralogist (http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/AmMin/AmMineral.html<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.minsocam.org%2FMSA%2FAmMin%2FAmMineral.html&data=05%7C01%7CCallum.Hetherington%40ttu.edu%7C1e777b4b11614f0f075d08da323cf9b2%7C178a51bf8b2049ffb65556245d5c173c%7C0%7C0%7C637877534930632588%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=oc9qENhS0qH67SKpTHe3HcdRP8gqG1kgGjJWEqDE57o%3D&reserved=0>)