Abstract: Repatriation of an item of lost personal property with the owner is achieved with an arrangement that closely associates a transponder with the personal property item. The transponder emits a unique identifying signal when stimulated by an excitation signal from a detection unit. A database is compiled and maintained by a service provider. The databases contains a population of records, each record associating the unique identifying signal from one of the transponders with identifying information of the owner. When a finder of the item contacts the service provider, a conduit through which the item can be returned to the owner is established.