Merlin engine valuation

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Member for

15 years 10 months

Posts: 582

Hi,

Can anyone help out with providing valuations for updating our museum insurance policy please, or point us towards an organisation that can offer Independant advice? I obviously don't want to draw attention to high value artefacts on a public forum but would really appreciate some help, especially regarding a complete Merlin engine.

If anyone is in a position to help then it would be great to hear from you via PM.

Thanks

Original post

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 8,464

Complete and potentially usable as a core? Or complete in as recovered from a crash?

If the former, you have to consider replacement value - so I would be looking at 25-30K I think.

Member for

15 years 10 months

Posts: 582

Thanks for the reply Bruce, I've sent you an Email with some more information.

Member for

13 years

Posts: 520

Hi,

Can anyone help out with providing valuations for updating our museum insurance policy please, or point us towards an organisation that can offer Independant advice?
Thanks

Good point. How do you obtain robust Insurance values? The activities of a few people on evilbay have completely distorted the market. There isn't a Stanley Gibbons for aviation artefacts so what do people do?

Member for

18 years 2 months

Posts: 7,742

This is an interesting topic and one which has a variety of options; in recent years there has been a greater emphasis on valuing items individually rather than the more typical over all valuation systems of times past.

Most insurance companies will request a respected independent valuation, complete with some form of explanation of the methodology and perhaps even photographs of the item.

This latter point could include monitoring the sale of similar items over a number of years; understanding the state of the objects already in museums; what future opportunities are there for an item coming onto the market or being available to replace an object were it to be ‘lost’.

It can also be a variable valuation system (some may go up and others down) as and when items are reassessed, typically on a 3 year cycle for most insurance companies.

Also linking in the National Aviation Heritage Register can help when assessing airframes; perhaps the BAPC Engine Register could help for aero engines.

Finally I would suggest a big dose of realism might counteract the online sale prices.

Member for

18 years 1 month

Posts: 1,270

Complete and potentially usable as a core? Or complete in as recovered from a crash?

If the former, you have to consider replacement value - so I would be looking at 25-30K I think.

Pretty close. A core Merlin engine costs about £20k at present, so replacement would need to be 20 to 30k.
Crashed examples are up to around £3k, ignoring that recent glitch on eBay, and a really nice incomplete static restored engine would cost about £12k to replace.

Pete

Member for

18 years 3 months

Posts: 2,025

What's a ground running one worth?( to replace) labour to rebuild an engine to ground running must equal or exceed that for an airworthy example, given that far more machining and hand work is needed as a trade off for prohibitably expensive parts, and the repair of castings etc that must be reused for the same reason.

Member for

18 years 1 month

Posts: 1,270

It can be that way, yes.
The crashed one I built first took about 3000 hours, but that included making all the tools.
A rebuild to flight takes about 1300 hours, but there is a huge expense in NDT and paperwork as well as parts.
I guess the financial cost of my Merlin XX must have been under £10k, compared to £140k.

Pete

Member for

15 years 10 months

Posts: 582

Thanks all for taking the time to reply, much appreciated.

Tim