Playchecked is an online database community for musicians. When you register your instrument it effectively becomes a member of the community. Your instrument will be identified by its unique serial number and a brief description in terms of its type and physical appearance. It will also have a status.

Owned means that the owner has the instrument.

For Sale means that anyone thinking of buying the instrument knows that it is genuinely for sale.

Stolen means that if you come across it for sale it does not belong to the seller and the owner probably wants it back – wouldn’t you?

Sold means that the instrument is no longer yours. You may have sold it or given it away. It will be up to the new owner to register their new instrument for themselves.

Click on the blue “Register My Instrument” button at the top of the page. Create an account using your email address and a suitable password. Read the Terms and Conditions which you need to accept and then press the blue “Register” button.

After completing an email verification process, you will be a member of the PlayChecked community and you can start registering instruments. Once you become a member you can log in using your email address and password.

PlayChecked.com has been designed to make checking the status of an instrument very easy. If you wish to check the status of a potential purchase simply go to PlayChecked.com, click the green “Search Serial Number” button and enter the serial number exactly as it appears on the instrument.

If the instrument has been registered with PlayChecked.com you can see what its status is. Don’t forget, the more members there are of the PlayChecked community, the safer our instruments will be as the potential market for stolen goods reduces.

You will see a dashboard that shows the details of the instruments that you register. You will be able to change the details, although in most cases it is unlikely that any will actually change, unless you decide to identify your instrument with a unique paint job!

Using Playchecked would be less messy. The only way to remove an instrument from your dashboard is to change its status to sold. It is really important that instrument details are entered accurately. To help with this, PlayChecked.com has listed the names of hundreds of instrument types and manufacturers but it is not intended to be a complete list of every instrument ever made.

Serial numbers must be entered exactly as they appear on the instrument with the exception of spaces which can be ignored. 

If the worst does happen, you simply change the status to Stolen. We would also urge you to alert the Police, get a crime number and add it to your instrument dashboard.

A crime number will provide a very useful reference for anyone who might come across your instrument. If you are reunited with your instrument you simply change the status back to Owned, or Sold if you no longer want it.

Please remember that PlayChecked.Com is not able to search for missing instruments or provide any insurance against theft. However, as the Playchecked community expands, a growing number of musicians will potentially be able to report stolen instruments that they come across and consequently begin to erode the stolen instrument market.

If you have completed a serial number search and discovered that the instrument has been flagged as stolen, you can report this with a single button press to alert the owner. You can also add information such as where the instrument is. The owner can then take steps to retrieve the instrument.

Please remember that PlayChecked.com is not able to search for missing instruments or provide any insurance against theft. To help prevent anyone from misusing this service, user IP addresses will be made available to the Police if required as the whole purpose of PlayChecked.com is to seriously help musicians stay in touch with their instruments.

If you are no longer the owner of your instrument because you have sold it or otherwise disposed of it, simply change the status of that instrument to Sold.

The instrument will then no longer be visible in your dashboard. It will be up to the new owner to register it. However, anyone searching for the instrument will be able to see that the instrument had been registered in order to satisfy themselves that it had genuinely been sold, where and when. For example, if a guitar was for sale in a local music shop and you could see that the previous owner had sold it to them, you will know that the sale is likely to be genuine. Private sales will simply indicate in which town and country the instrument was sold. 

Don’t worry. PlayChecked.com will not ask you for your address or name. Your PlayChecked identity will be an email address. We will ask you to identify the town and country that the instruments live in as an extra means of checking the legitimacy of an instrument that is for sale.

For example, an instrument that is for sale in Nottingham that is supposed to live in Brighton would be suspicious. Users of PlayChecked.com will only be able to see a description and status of your instrument, as well as its usual location if they enter a registered serial number that matches your instrument.

They will also be able to see the instrument history in much the same way as a car log book shows how many previous owners there have been and the sale dates. However, no one will be able to see your name and address as PlayCheck.com will not ask for that information.

Yes. PlayChecked.com is currently a not for profit service. It was conceived because it is desperately upsetting for musicians when someone who probably doesn’t know what they have taken, makes off with your instrument.

As the PlayChecked community grows it is hoped that instruments will become less and less popular targets for thieves as the market for them shrinks, because every instrument will have been Playchecked. Please join the mission today.