who buys stolen saddles?

D

D66

Well-Known Member
Joined
8 June 2010
Messages
10,459
Location
A very superior place.
Visit site
We all complain about our insurance premiums rocketing and our tack rooms being cleaned out by thieves but who is buying the stolen saddles. Has any insurance company or the police checked tack for security numbers at a show? Do auction houses care if the saddles passing through their sale rooms are stolen? Would you buy a saddle if you knew it was nicked and how would you check?
 
Unless a saddle is stamped, as a private buyer I have no way of scanning it to see if there is a microchip inside. The last saddle I bought was brand new, from a shop and the previous saddle also came from a shop. I have no idea if they had scanned the saddle, it certainly was not stamped.

I have not had my saddles stamped. Having had one stolen from an outdoor tack room, I now keep them in my dining room.

Needless to say, I wouldn't buy a saddle if I had suspicions it had been stolen.
 
If you go to a horse and tack sale and look around it is impossible to tell if the tack on offer is stolen or not.
Even if you have a chip reader available you would need to be able to contact the data tag company to see if that number was down as stolen
I would certainly do a ''double take'' on upmarket saddles as most of these tack sales consist of either new 'cheapo' stuff or people having a clear out.
Locally a good Stubben saddle was sold but I did know the seller and it was a genuine sale as she had lost her horse.
 
There is NO WAY that I would knowingly buy a stolen saddle. One day it could be mine that's nicked, I think people conveniently forget that.
 
I had my saddle, along with seven others plus various other tack, stolen when I was at my previous yard. The police informed us that most stolen saddles/tack are sold at horse fairs or tack sales. The saddles stolen from our yard were ordinary everyday saddles that would not have raised any eyebrows at the tack sale or on ebay. If I was offered a good saddle at a very good price I'm not even sure the question of whether or not it was stolen would even cross my mind.

ETA: If I KNEW something was stolen, then I would definitely not buy it!
 
I keep my saddles in the house that way the house contents insurance covers them. But as others have said how can you know that a saddle is stolen when you buy. people don't deliberately buy them.
 
Buying something that you know, or even may simply believe/suspect could be stolen - that in itself is a criminal offence. You would end up with handing stolen goods on your record and some sort of punishment through the Courts!

I wonder how many stolen saddles sell on Ebay, or even on Preloved etc... I mean - without having something scanned - how would you know? xx
 
As a Saddler, I had a micro chipping service readily available at my workshop for customers (printed circuit applied to the tree so cannot be accessed to remove it unless you strip the saddle down). As well as free postcoding on the sweat flaps.
I only have ever done 2 in 24 years as a Saddler!
No one bothers and the people who do are no better off really as others have said WHO bothers to scan or check them?
Used to be the same with pets until most vets started using the scanners.
Maybe if all horse vets, physios, Saddlers and Saddle Fitters carried them and scanned the saddles we either repair, alter, fit to the horse or flock up, we could isolate a stolen saddle and do something about it?
The downside is of course, if they were unsure about the origin of the saddle and people knew we scanned saddles, they may hold off having their saddles checked or repaired to the detriment of themselves or their horses .
I don't really know what the answer is, maybe just insist on any saddles up for sale at auctions and boot sales are scanned, again that wouldn't stop Ebay or any other online sales or someone merely selling things on the black market but it might help slow the selling of stolen saddles down a bit but you will never be able to stop it unless they can start fitting a mini version of the Tracker in it that they use on cars, now there's a thought!
Oz :)
 
Last edited:
my saddler showed me that you can stamp over stamps over and over again and that micro chips get damaged when reflocking and they dont work and police dont even know how to scan and a lot of micro chips dont work once inserted anyway and that the scanners and chips are changed that often that they dont pick up older chips anyway - so there is no way to make sure it is actually yours at all. leather is too forgiving :o
 
StormyMoments said:
my saddler showed me that you can stamp over stamps over and over again and that micro chips get damaged when reflocking and they dont work and police dont even know how to scan and a lot of micro chips dont work once inserted anyway and that the scanners and chips are changed that often that they dont pick up older chips anyway - so there is no way to make sure it is actually yours at all. leather is too forgiving :o
Click to expand...

This is why you should have a printed circuit applied directly onto the tree rather than a lumpy micro chip shoved into the flock (which incidently I have had to take some of these out of the flock whilst flocking up a saddle that others had placed in there as they had moved and were pressing through the panel onto the horse making it sore, like the Princess and the pea)
 
There are people out there that will willingly buy stolen tack or other people that are unaware that the tack they are purchasing is stolen.

Tack rooms make easy targets as they rarely have sophisticated security systems.

Best advice is to keep tack indoors at home and not at the yard.

If you want any chance of your saddles etc. being identified as your property once recovered then you need to tack mark them with your postcode (easily done with a tack marking kit available from Halfords), have them microchipped and also apply Smartwater (uniquely codes your property with uniquely coded granules which contain an identity number which identifies you as the owner).

The police recover a lot of tack but are unable to identify the owner as they are not marked.

One solution would be for all manufacturers of saddles to incorporate a micro-chip within them and for there to be an international data base which would identify the owners of the saddle.
 
I agree with the advice about keeping tack at home but unfortunately that is not always practical. I dont drive and my horse is kept on a yard 20 mins walking distance away from my home (across the fields with various stiles and gates). There is no way I would be able to carry my saddle and tack up to the yard so have no option but to leave my tack at the yard. I do have a lockable tack cabinet in my tack room which is also locked and has grills fitted to the windows. The yard has motion sensor lights and the YO lives at the entrance to the drive. We did have CCTV but thieves stole it (though not any tack)!!!
 
POLLDARK said:
I keep my saddles in the house that way the house contents insurance covers them.
Click to expand...

So do I and always have. I just cannot understand why people keep their tack on yards, particularly one or two horse owners. It's understandable if you have loads of horses/saddles but if you only have one or two, take them home! If someone broke into your house, they'd most likely be after electrical goods and money, not tack, and if they did happen to take your tack, it would be covered by your house ins. If they break into a yard, they're usually only after one thing.

I have bought several second hand saddles, some from saddlers, some from local ads. I have no idea if any of them were stolen or not, but if I thought there might be a chance that they were, I wouldn't have bought them.

Does stolen tack get exported at all?
 
Thanks for the responses. I have been thinking about how no-one not the police or the insurance companies try to track down the stolen saddles. I'm going to have my saddle marked and logged on a police system in two weeks time and it is kept indoors but until we have just one ID numbering system and saddlers checking for microchips I don't hold out much hope for getting it back if it is stolen. IMO all new saddles should be given a number and/or a micro chip and random checks should be done at shows and tack sales.
 
I think, unless you have your saddle/s clearly stamped in some distinct and unique way, it would be VERY difficult to find it once it was stolen and out on the open market.

I have several second hand saddles bought from live-auction, eBay, tack shop and private sellers - how would I know if any of them are microchipped? Or previously stolen? One or two have makers number stamped into them but where would I know to look to see if these saddles were stolen.

It works both ways, if any of mine were stolen, how on earth would anyone buying them know to check for a chip or realise that the saddle number was on a stolen register somewhere?
 
As an owner I haven't considered paying for a chip for my saddle as until its found by police I'm unlikely to get it back any way :( so i've been working on a tracker for saddles for my own use and have just put a thread on (GPS Saddle Tracker) to see if there would be any interest commercially and looking at peoples thought here it seems like there would - am i right? For the saddler on here how easy would it be to put on the tree and at what cost? Don't want princess & pea situation x
 
friz said:
As an owner I haven't considered paying for a chip for my saddle as until its found by police I'm unlikely to get it back any way :( so i've been working on a tracker for saddles for my own use and have just put a thread on (GPS Saddle Tracker) to see if there would be any interest commercially and looking at peoples thought here it seems like there would - am i right? For the saddler on here how easy would it be to put on the tree and at what cost? Don't want princess & pea situation x
Click to expand...

Depends what shape it is, PM me and we can have a chat. Oz
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top