David Cooke, a music teacher in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and his son James, a student at the Royal Northern College of Music, have developed a new instrument registration website that has the potential to significantly reduce the theft of musical instruments. Even though specialist insurance companies will pay for stolen instruments to be replaced, every player will tell you that no two instruments are the same and that a new one won’t fully replace the one that was stolen. PlayChecked.com seeks to reduce instrument theft by limiting the opportunities for thieves to sell on stolen instruments.
PlayChecked.com users register their instruments by their serial number and give each one a status: Owned, For Sale, Stolen or Sold. Anyone buying an instrument can enter a serial number and check its status before buying it. If it has a “stolen” status they can alert the owner as to its whereabouts and walk away from the sale. If the status is “for sale” they know that the sale is legitimate.
As the PlayChecked community grows it is hoped that instruments will become less and less popular targets for thieves as the market for selling them shrinks. Playchecked.com is a free service. The idea is that the more it is used, the safer everyone's instruments will become.
You can make sure your instruments and guitar amps are Playchecked now at www.playchecked.com
