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Comment by jinto36 | Hacker News Reader

The serial number sticker on my Specialized de-laminated and peeled off after a few years of commuting in occasionally damp conditions. I was kind of shocked that there wouldn't be a better way of uniquely identifying it if I needed to, aside from having pictures of scratches and dings.

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In my country the registration is a sticker but and the bike frame itself also has a serial number engraved

Can't engrave carbon fiber.

you can inset a label into the resin, or a metal plate with an engraving on it. Or engrave any of the other embedded metal parts already in the frame for connection with the outside world.

Yes, this is a solvable problem. My hunch is that there’s no incentive for bike manufacturers to deal with this. If there were permanent serial numbers that could be attributed to the owner, they’d have to respond to thousands of requests for verification.

The registration is with the police. The bike manufacturer just has to stamp a serial number on the frame

i would not leave carbon fiber bike anywhere but in my locked house

For a more expensive bike it’s worth considering an active tracker. Some guys near hear burgled a bike shop recently, and were busted quickly one of the reasons being the owners noticed the stock moving.

It's worth doing a few things on the frame to make it unique. Bit of paint and so on. It both makes it identifiable and less attractive to professional thieves who want to flip whole bikes.

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