Thanks Neganur! That's exactly my point.
My home insurance company straight up refused to sell me an insurance after I handed them a list of my equipment with purchase date, used price, list price, serial numbers and photographs...
Yep, and not all policy's require you to give them a list. Some only require it for items over $3k.
You can have a nice lab setup with 50 pieces of test gear where all of it is under the limit.
So you can have insurance and think you're covered (and you should be), but if they knew about your lab they wouldnt have covered you. It's a bad place to be in at claim time.
At first I got a lot of silly questions like what do I use this for, why do I need it, what exactly is it etc.
Then we were talking about the amount of insurance I wanted which was no problem at all, but when I handed him my list and he saw the list price of the gear the guy spent 30 minutes on the phone talking to his head office only to tell me that "sorry sir but we will not sell you an insurance".
It really pissed me off since it would be no problem if I had a super expensive home cinema system or 5 PCs or similar things that costs silly money. Just that the list price of an oscilloscope is above 20k new (I bought it used for 5k) an old Keysight spectrum analyzer has a list price of more than 100k (E4445 PSA) but they seem unable to grasp that you can buy this stuff used for much less ( I even made him browse Keysight's ebay website...).
I just want it insured so that I can buy equivalent used stuff in case of fire or whatever.
They don't expect a normal home to have a lab full of test equipment for hobby use, so they don't ask if you have it.
The usual rule for personal items should legally apply, if it's for personal use then it should be covered. "hobby" is personal use.
However they will not see it this way at claim time. They will see it as an opportunity to get out of paying because it seems like business equipment and if you say it's not for business they will think you're lying.
But if you have a recorded phone call where you told them in clear English about the situation then you are in a MUCH better position.