Apparatuses and methods associated with preserving authentication under item change are disclosed herein. In embodiments, acquiring digital image data of an image of at least a portion of a target physical object; extracting features from the image data to form a digital fingerprint; querying the database system to seek a matching record based on the digital fingerprint; based on an amount of difference between the digital fingerprint and a stored digital fingerprint of the database, update the database system to output a new indication of a new match to the physical object for any new samples that are not matchable to the stored digital fingerprint within a first predetermined similarity threshold provided the new samples are matchable to the digital fingerprint within a second predetermined similarity threshold. Other embodiments may be disclosed or claimed.