[COLOR="Purple"]Hilarious...but I understand your point.

...here is an insurance company...an animal which wants to do everything possible NOT to pay out the $ for what the subscriber had been paying premiums for for gawd knows how long. So, in order to do that, they may well nitpick that metal stuff will be OK after being cleaned up.

So your buddy needs to be prepared with a retort...I can dig where you are coming from.

Other than contacting a professional cymbalmaker such as Mike Skiba or Matt Bettis for a letter or such...I am drawing a blank.[/COLOR]

Thank you, well put.

Were all the cymbals actually in the fire, or were some only in the periphery. If any are only covered with soot, and were not actually cooked by the flames, they may be OK. If they were in the fire that destroyed the drumset, the heat would have changed the properties of the metal and therefore as Drumaholic indicated, they are most likely "toast".