Watches often get stolen, and in today’s marketplace, and with so many ways to buy a pre-owned watch, it has never been more important to determine whether a watch has been swiped from its rightful owner. To help identify pilfered watches, the Art Loss Register, the world’s largest private database of stolen art and collectibles, recently launched the Watch Register for stolen timepieces.

On the website, after entering the watch model and serial number, the Watch Register will search its database of over 50,000 watches.The Watch Register is designed for watch dealers, pawn brokers and anyone buying or selling pre-owned watches—additionally, people can register watches that they have had stolen.

“Christie’s and Sotheby’s are shareholders, and we check all their watches.” says Katya Hills, manager at The Watch Register. “We need people to register their losses so that customers can check against the database,” she continues. “But, our database is still a very small portion of what is stolen. We proactively contact police about thefts and try to get the serial numbers of the watches stolen. Not every watch has a serial number, so ones that don’t have a serial number, we check against an image, or see if there are unique features (like customization and engravings).”

thewatchregister.com