Published by Adrian Vogel · Reading time: approx. 4 minutes
Anyone selling a well-kept car puts the book with the workshop stamps on the table – and the buyer relaxes. Not because the book is pretty, but because somebody other than the seller has confirmed what happened to the vehicle. "Well maintained" becomes evidence.
For almost everything else you own, this logic does not exist. Yet an e-bike or a grand piano lives just as much on its history – and ends up, sooner or later, with relatives who do not know what they have in front of them.
Manufacturer register or owner's history
With a car the manufacturer keeps the register and decides who may make an entry. Something similar now exists for individual watch brands or for e-bikes with a Bosch drive. Such registers are useful, but they only know what the manufacturer itself knows: its own brand, from a particular model year onwards. The older instrument, the second-hand bike, the inherited watch of another brand do not appear there.
At OWNAMIC the history belongs to the owner. You keep the object in your inventory, create an event for every service, repair or restoration, and attach the invoice, the workshop report or photos to it. The specialist business that carried out the work can then confirm exactly that event. We call it the digitally confirmed service history. We deliberately leave motor vehicles out of it – there, documentation by the manufacturer is well established and subject to rules of its own.
What "confirmed" means
Precisely stated: an identified party has declared that it carried out a single, specifically described job. No more, no less.
Two labels make that traceable. Every entry in the inventory carries one of four evidence levels – documented, researched, estimated or assumed – so you can see at a glance how solid it is. And with every confirmation it is visible how the identity of the confirming party was checked: via a confirmed e-mail address, via proof of the company domain, or via the commercial register entry.
Two examples
The e-bike. According to the German bicycle industry association ZIV, an e-bike from a specialist retailer now costs just under 4,000 euros on average, with good models well above that. The value sits in the battery and the drive – and both can only really be assessed at a specialist dealer: read out the battery condition, update the software, check for wear. Anyone selling after three years has to reckon with a loss in value of up to 80 per cent, according to TÜV Rheinland. A buyer who sees inspections, the latest capacity test and the updates confirmed in front of them negotiates on a different basis from one who is merely told about them. And in the event of theft, the invoice and the frame number are close at hand.
The grand piano. A piano lasts generations if it is looked after. Bechstein recommends tuning once or twice a year; on top of that come regulation and voicing by a trained piano builder – a protected trade qualification in Germany, unlike "piano tuner". With older instruments it is the restoration history that decides the value: an overhauled grand piano from a renowned maker trades in the five-figure range, and the supporting documents underpin the price. In the event of inheritance they become priceless. Relatives who do not play themselves otherwise have no way of knowing whether the instrument in the living room is worth a few hundred or several tens of thousands of euros. How to archive an instrument, or a whole collection, for the long term is something we show elsewhere.
What a confirmation is legally – and what it is not
The confirmation is a simple electronic signature under the eIDAS Regulation. It is admissible in evidence and is assessed by a court at its own discretion, together with the attached documents. It does not have the special evidential weight that the law assigns to a qualified signature. It is a solid building block, not an automatism. OWNAMIC is not a trust service provider and does not give legal advice.
Passing things on
Almost every record leads to one quiet question: what happens to it when I am no longer here? A confirmed history spares the heirs the searching and the guesswork – and heads off disputes where several people have to reach agreement. How to prepare for that is set out under passing on and providing for. The forthcoming EU Digital Product Passport will partly supplement this for new products; for everything that already exists, the history stays with the owner.
If you take away what "confirmed" means, this article has done its job.
How to get started
The digitally confirmed service history is part of OWNAMIC and works for every object in your inventory – from the e-bike through the grand piano to the collection. Create the object, record the next service as an event and attach the invoice to it. Whether your specialist business can already confirm is shown when you create the event; if it cannot, you can invite it in a few clicks. Businesses that would like to offer their customers this confirmation will find the details in our partner programme.
This article is not legal advice.
Further reading: Value loss without papers – why evidence decides the price
Sources
- Zweirad-Industrie-Verband: market data 2025. https://www.ziv-zweirad.de/2026/03/11/markdaten-2025/ – average selling price of an e-bike at a specialist retailer. Evidence level: researched (primary source, industry association).
- TÜV Rheinland via Finanztip: loss in value of an e-bike. https://www.finanztip.de/e-bike-kaufen/ – up to 80 per cent loss in value after three years. Evidence level: researched (secondary).
- C. Bechstein: piano tuning and care. https://www.bechstein.com/service/pflege-wartung/klavierstimmung/ – tuning intervals, regulation and voicing by the piano builder. Evidence level: researched (primary source, manufacturer).
- eIDAS Regulation (EU) 910/2014, Art. 25. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32014R0910 – legal effect and admissibility of electronic signatures in evidence. Evidence level: documented (legal provision).