Sucks for him, and good advice on insuring your firearms - or at least keeping detailed records. I keep a spreadsheet of all of my firearms, info like make/model, purchase price, date, S/N, model, unique attributes, location purchased, etc.

A lot of folks put name and phone number under the grip panel of handguns or under the buttplate of rifles/shotguns.

I'm still on the fence about letting anyone know how many guns I own for any purpose. My insurance policy rider only has enough of the most expensive models listed, such that if their value was restored by the policy, then I could replace most of the others that I would want/need. So I made a calculated estimation for replacement costs for all of them, then decided which ones that I know I would want/need to replace, how much all of those would cost, and stacked up the least number of "record guns" to put on paper to make sure I covered that value (meaning only the highest dollar models go on the list, since one high dollar gun I wouldn't care about replacing might replace 2 or 3 cheaper guns that I DO want back).

My old insurance policy/agent was better. I had my agent over (a buddy of mine), we went through appraisal lists and he verified that I possessed the guns, NOTHING WAS WRITTEN DOWN, then we both signed a dollar value for the "collection". If a fire destroyed them, or if they were all stolen, I'd get that value back, minus the value of whatever individual guns I still had.

EDIT: I misread the timing wrong the first time. Still, only takes 2min to put your guns in the safe. Same deal with the fact that he doesn't have record of his serial numbers - takes 2min to write it down.

The best firearm insurance policy you can buy isn't made of paper, it's made of steel. If you don't put them in the safe, it won't do you much good.