How Much Would It Cost To Insure Imelda Marcos' Shoes?
30 Nov 2015
We asked our research team, “How much would it cost to insure the shoe collection of one of the world’s most infamous collectors?” Here’s what we found.
How many shoes did she have, and what were they worth?
Former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, was also dubbed the “First Lady of Shoes” because she was reported to have once owned up to 3,000 pairs of shoes.
The First Lady had to leave 1,200 pairs of shoes in the Philippines in 1986 because they were charged with defrauding the Filipino public and forced to flee from a military-backed people’s revolution. The shoes and other apparel had been moved in 150 boxes to the Manila National Museum, but then had been placed behind padlock and not unpacked or wrapped in protective materials.
In 2012, it was reported that her famous collection had been partly destroyed by termites, stains, and flooding from tropical rain storms, after lying in storage for the 26 years since she was exiled from the country. Like Australia, the Philippines suffers from frequent natural disasters such as cyclones, as well as earthquakes and active volcanoes.
Imelda Marcos claimed most of the shoes had been given to her as gifts from shoemakers in Marikina City, the shoemaking capital of the Philippines. Imelda said she was only asked to promote the shoemakers’ products by wearing the gift shoes to public events. The Marcos were later charged
There are reportedly still 765 pairs of Marcos’ shoes that remain safely stored behind glass in the Marikina Shoe Museum. There was 800 pairs there, but the 2009 floods claimed another few dozen. You can drop by the museum to gaze at them longingly anytime you feel like it, and in fact, 50 to 100 Filipino and foreign tourists do just that every day of the week.
Insuring the shoes
Some pairs of Imelda’s shoes have been auctioned off for up to $10,000 each, but most of them would not fetch that much. Had the 3,000 pairs stayed together, the value of the collection could be anything from $1 million up to $3 million. That’s a pretty wide margin of difference!
Now, our Canstar Contents Insurance Comparison usually only compares insurance for contents of up to $200,000 for Contents Only Insurance, also known as Personal Effects Insurance. But by making a few simple assumptions, we can come up with a purely hypothetical quote:
- $1 million worth of contents. (For contents worth more than $1 million, you’d need to contact the insurance provider directly to obtain a quote.)
- Insured with one of our 5-star rated contents only insurance providers.
- Living in the Philippines, with a similar number of natural disasters to North Queensland – therefore quote is based on insurance costs for North Queensland.
- Quote for cost of premium: $120.34/month (with a 10% discount for purchasing insurance online) or $1,444.19 paid annually.
The above quote is based on a hypothetical scenario and should not be used as a guide in considering insurance for the contents of your own home. You can compare home and contents insurance quotes on our website, and we always recommend that you read the PDS of any insurance product before making any purchase.
We know that average home and contents insurance in North Queensland still costs a considerable amount more than average home and contents insurance in the rest of the country in general. Happily, our 2015 star ratings report for home and contents insurance shows that premiums have decreased since 2014 – and they could decrease further if the recommendations from the 2015 Build to Last report were taken on board.
Insuring your own shoe collection
Since it doesn’t cost too much to insure such a massive and valuable collection of shoes, you should definitely be insuring your smaller collection!
Laurina Fleure, the TV personality and owner of online women’s clothing icon Pialia.co, says she recently took out insurance to cover her shoe collection. She estimated it would cost almost $10,000 to replace all of her designer shoes.
In a Newspoll survey of more than 1,200 women, 23% of women who had shoe collections worth more than $3,000 said they probably don’t have enough insurance to replace their favourite heels if something should happen.
