If you keep bullion at home, the question usually arrives in one of two forms: "is this covered by my house and contents policy?" or "what would I actually have to show an insurer if it were gone?" The first has no universal answer in New Zealand, because wordings differ between insurers and between products. The second is entirely within your control, and most people leave it too late.
One note first. Global Copper sells copper bullion. We are not insurance advisers and we are not licensed financial advisers. Nothing here is advice about what metal is worth, whether you should hold it, or what cover you should buy. Treat it as a checklist for a conversation with your own insurer, broker or accountant.
Read the wording before you assume you are covered
General contents cover in New Zealand is written policy by policy, and the treatment of bullion, coins and collections is not consistent. Some wordings deal with them under a "valuables" heading, some under "collections", some name precious metals directly, and some say nothing at all, which is its own kind of answer. Sub-limits, exclusions for unexplained disappearance, and conditions about how items are secured appear in some policies and not in others.
So the first task is not paperwork, it is reading. Search your policy document for the words bullion, coin, collection, valuables and precious metal, and write down what it actually says rather than what you assume it says. Then put the gaps to your insurer or broker in writing, and keep the reply.
Worth asking in that email:
- Does the policy treat bullion as ordinary contents, as a valuable, or as a collection, and is there a category limit or a single-item limit?
- Can items be specified individually, and what documentation is required to specify them?
- Does the policy settle on what was paid, or on the cost of replacing the item at the time of the claim?
- Are there conditions about safes, locks or alarms that change whether a claim is payable?
- Is metal held somewhere other than the home address, such as a bank safe deposit box, treated differently?
Documentation is the part you control
Whatever cover you end up with, a claim is assessed on evidence, and nobody keeps that evidence for you. We do not run a vault, a storage programme or a serial registry, so once an order is delivered the record of what you hold is yours to keep. It is a short job to build and a shorter one to maintain.
1. Keep the purchase trail intact
For each order, save four things in one folder:
- The order confirmation email, which carries the order number and the itemised list.
- The tax invoice, which shows the amount paid and the GST component.
- The delivery record. We deliver within New Zealand only. Orders ship within 1 to 3 business days and travel tracked with signature, so save the tracking number and the delivery confirmation when it arrives.
- The payment record, usually a line on a bank or card statement that matches the invoice total.
Together those four establish who bought what, when, and that it arrived, which is usually the chain a claim is assessed on.
On tax: New Zealand's fine metal GST exemption covers gold, silver and platinum in investment form, and copper sits outside it. Copper bullion is therefore sold GST inclusive, and your invoice shows GST in the ordinary way. Confirm your own position with your accountant or Inland Revenue rather than relying on a blog article.
2. Build a simple item schedule
A spreadsheet is enough: one row per item or sealed unit.
- Description exactly as it appears on the invoice, for example "1 Troy Ounce Copper Bar .999 Fine", and the format: bar, round or tube.
- Stated purity. For our copper that is .999 fine, which is three nines, not four.
- Quantity of pieces, weight in troy ounces, and total troy ounces for multi-piece units.
- Date acquired and the order number it arrived on.
- Price paid, and the delivered cost if shipping was charged.
- Any serial number, mint mark or maker's mark actually present on the piece or its packaging.
- Where it is kept, recorded in general terms rather than as a set of directions.
- A reference to the photograph file for that row.
A worked example. A Tube of 20 x 1 Troy Ounce Copper Rounds at $160.00 is 20 troy ounces, which works out at $8.00 per troy ounce. Add a single 1 Troy Ounce Copper Bar .999 Fine at $9.00 and the order holds 21 troy ounces for $169.00 of metal. Because that total sits under NZ$200, the NZ$20 flat delivery charge applies, so the delivered cost recorded against those two rows is $189.00.
3. Photograph it once, properly
Photographs are what make the list checkable later. Shoot each item or sealed tube on a plain surface in daylight, with something of known size for scale. Capture both faces of a bar or round, plus any packaging, card or seal, since that is often where weight and purity are printed. Take one wider shot of the group so quantities are visible in a single frame.
Two cautions. Do not photograph the metal in a way that also shows your locks, safe model, alarm panel or the layout of the room, and keep the images out of anything public or shared. Documentation exists for an insurer, not for an audience.
Where the record lives matters
A schedule stored only on the machine sitting in the same room as the metal is not much of a schedule. Keep at least one copy elsewhere: a password-protected cloud folder, an encrypted drive at another address, or a copy with your solicitor alongside other estate paperwork.
Tell one trusted person, or your executor, that the record exists and how to reach it. Metal nobody knows about can be missed entirely when an estate is settled. Keep safe combinations and access codes out of the schedule, in a separate place, so the document you might one day hand to an assessor is not also a set of instructions.
Putting a number on it without guessing
Two figures do the work. The first is what you paid, straight off the invoice, which never changes. The second is what the same item would cost to buy today, which matters if your policy settles on replacement rather than original cost.
Neither figure requires speculation, and you should not add any. Copper prices move. We do not forecast them, and this article does not. When you review the schedule, simply note the current retail price of the equivalent item on the day you review it, and record that date beside it. Current pricing for every size sits on the copper bullion collection page. Do not carry a figure forward from three years ago and let an insurer assume it still describes the holding.
Points that come up for New Zealand holders
Some situations are worth raising with your insurer directly rather than deciding for yourself:
- Renting. Contents cover on a tenancy policy is a separate contract from the landlord's building cover, and valuables are treated differently in some of them.
- Metal held in a bank safe deposit box, which may sit outside the home contents section entirely.
- A holding that has grown over time. The point at which a category limit starts to bite is rarely obvious, and nobody will tell you unprompted.
- Moving house, which usually needs to be notified before the metal moves rather than after.
A review rhythm that holds up
Add a row on the day each order arrives, while the packaging and paperwork are still in front of you. Re-read the relevant section of your policy at renewal, since wordings get updated between years. Refresh the recorded values and re-shoot the photographs once a year. A schedule slightly out of date beats a perfect one you abandoned.
If you have mislaid an order confirmation or invoice for a purchase made through this store, get in touch with the order number or the email address the order was placed under and we can send you a copy. That is a record of the transaction, not a verification of the metal itself, which is not something we offer.
None of the above is financial advice, tax advice or insurance advice, and we are not licensed to give any of the three. It is a records checklist. The value of the exercise is that it costs little now and removes an argument later.