The invention provides a method of manufacturing piezoelectric wafers of surface acoustic wave (SAW) identification tags. In one embodiment, the method includes: (1) using a master reticle to form, on each of the piezoelectric wafers, wafer-independent patterns that encode digits of a first significance for SAW identification tags; and (2) using different ones of a library of coding reticles to form, on each of the piezoelectric wafers, wafer-dependent patterns that encode digits of a second significance for SAW identification tags.