Great to read that the efforts of you HM and the collaboration of others can result in the identification of lost/stolen items and the potential return to their original owners. However convoluted the method, it worked!
I am prompted to write because a stainless steel Rolex Daytona 116520 reported stolen during a burglary on 11th January has today been located, just days later. Without Eddie's Lost and Found sub-forum this would not have happened. http://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.ph...aytona-K465828
It is a miserable fact that there are multiple registers of lost / stolen watches in the UK at the moment, with only superficial sharing of information. There are some manufacturer lists of course (notably, Rolex's, which is inexplicably inaccessible to dealers or the public), the Safergems / Checkmend Watch Register (which is fed information by all the UK's police forces) and the Art Loss Register's Watch Register.
Today's identification involved a ridiculously elaborate chain of events :
County police passed details to Safergems / Checkmend.
They passed the info to me.
I posted them on tz-uk Lost & Found.
Art Loss Register harvested the info from tz-uk L&F.
A dealer was offered the watch and contacted ALR.
ALR contacted me.
I contacted Safergems.
Safergems contacted county police.
County police contacted ALR.
County police liaising with dealer.
That is an unnecessarily convoluted route, but some result for a watch stolen just 6 days earlier! Let us hope that a good arrest follows.
My point is more than to celebrate the single, extraordinary recovery, but rather to inform that the tz-uk Lost & Found has become a sort of shared ground where different Registers are clearly harvesting and informally sharing details of stolen watches. It is potty that this is necessary and I am doing what I can to bring about proper sharing of data, but in the meantime let it be an encouragement to members to use the tz-uk Lost & Found. If you've genuinely had a watch stolen then post the details! You must include :
- the model and unique numbers of any watch
- details of the loss including date and location
- the crime or incident number
- the police station contact details
....and, most important, remember to update the post if your watch is later recovered.
If you publish these details in L&F, your watch may be entered onto the other registers and thereby greatly improve your chances of recovery.
Of course we must thank our host, Eddie. Thanks to your forum someone can now hope to get his watch back soon - and with any luck a baddy or two might get their comeuppance.
Haywood
Last edited by Haywood_Milton; 17th January 2018 at 13:42.
Great to read that the efforts of you HM and the collaboration of others can result in the identification of lost/stolen items and the potential return to their original owners. However convoluted the method, it worked!
If I’m understanding this correctly (and I think I am, given the point is the absence of joined-up co-operation lamented by Haywood), then this recovery was only made possible because Haywood linked Safergems / Checkmend and Art Loss Register by virtue of making that tz-uk L&F posting.
Whilst a fantastic outcome – take a bow Haywood & Eddie – it’s crazy that in the computerised, online age, it only happened because someone made a low-tech post on an internet forum.
Well done all concerned, and hopefully some progress is made re collaboration.
Excellent outcome, well done Haywood. I bet some lucky chap will be extremely pleased to be reunited with his Daytona and hopefully the scumbag who tried to sell it gets what he deserves.
everyone loves a good news story, a great result all round.
Very good result!
(Cue - 9 pages of arguments)
Thanks for the prompt Haywood. Well done - Sherlock. A Rolex was stolen off my wrist in Barcelona a few years ago on the street and I’ll put the details up.
Just been on a seminar on predictive analytics so any data harvesting of this kind could prove very useful to the authorities (in a good way).
M
Excellent outcome !
I’m impressed. Particular with that turnaround time.
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A good result, lets hope members here don't need to use this facility very often.
Nice to hear that. Glad someone’s getting their watch back. Bet they’ll be so happy.
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Great result. In a few years I suspect Blockchain technology will be used as an ownership register for high value watches and speed up the above.
A little convoluted but a great result nonetheless
Gray
So the watch was listed for sale on SC, is that right?
Wow, a convoluted route indeed but at least it worked. A great result!
It is excellent that TZ-UK's L&F has become a kind of unofficial clearing house. Sometimes ad hoc solutions work as well as intentionally set up systems, even though structured and automated information sharing via APIs should be better (and a forum can potentially be included in such an automated solution).