Found this site

[Christine W]

www.snagg.com

They use the same chips that dog owners implant in their pets
Thought this was worth posting.

[Rroyd]

Now if they would just develop some sort of transmitter that could be activated after your mandolin disappeared from the back seat of your car. . . I say that not totally in jest, simply because recovery, rather than identification, seems to be a greater problem. For example, when the Strad cello finally surfaced, they knew who it belonged to, but while it was sitting in the lady's living room while she contemplated turning it into a unique storace cabinet for her CD collection, no one knew where to look. Now if its transmitter had been activated, no problem.

[mandodebbie]

Don't they have micro-chips that are put in the kitty-cat's ears these days in case Puss gets stolen? I'm sure the scientists have developed similar devices for Important Government Briefcases and such. Why not put these tracking devices in not our precious instruments?(I won't be surprised if we could use them for our children, but that smacks of Big Brother thinking.):;):

[Greenmando]

Well they are not actually long distance transmitters or trackers. You have to be pretty close to the chip to activate it, and it merely responds with a serial number you can check a data base to get more info.
They could be used on children for people who worry about child abduction, but authorities would have to know they were there to look for them. If all children had them they could be scanned at hospitals and schools to verify id. However with any system someone will start forging them.

[TommyK]

A chip that could be scanned locally (w/in a few feet) for identification is one thing. If a remotely activated transmitter is available like 'Lo-Jack', the size of a #2 pencil, you'd have something. However, if it's the size of a calculator then where would you be able to stow it in a mando / fiddle, etc?
OOH OOH, brain flash... If it could be secreted in the case, a calculator size device could work.
For a mando, you could carry it in a Banjo case and have room enough for a larger device. Then again within a banjo case, you might not need the Lo-Jack. But you have the problem of 1 becoming 2.... what to do?
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif

[Tom C]

It would be good if builders put these things in the neck or some place it is not removable. If somebody was to try to pawn it, a scan would reveal that it was stolen. But people buy and sell things they
know are stolen anyway. All sorts of stores would need to be equiped with a reader and how do you actually enforce places of using it?