On occasion you’ll hear a story about an ownership dispute for a watch previously reported as stolen, generally in the context of it appearing at auction. In these cases, best to get the authorities involved instead of trying to wrangle the watch back on your own.
Most importantly, if you have a watch stolen you should also file a police report, and maintain all records related to your watch (oh, and you do insure your pieces as warranted, correct?).
As mentioned in the registry notes, the Alpha Hands stolen watch registry does not require a police report to be filed to be listed. The goal in having this registry is rather to just warn someone that there may be a claim to the watch. It’s not a perfect system to be sure, as police reports can be filed or watches simply posted as stolen, when in reality they either have not been, or else the stolen watch turns out to be a fake.
I actually ran into a case of someone disputing the theft of a watch with an Italian dealer, who owns a Rolex 6264, serial 372895, which is the same serial number reported stolen by another collector (on r-l-x.de, later deleted). The dealer provided me with images of the watch, including serial, and dates of posting as evidence of ownership, in addition to mentioning that Rolex had “certified” the watch as having a Paul Newman dial (I have not previously heard of Rolex certifying watches as originally having a specific dial). I removed the watch at his request, and this is just to point out that 1. the registry isn’t perfect (bad data in->bad data out), and 2. beware of fakes!