Date Code & Serial Number Checker

Three or four digits only, no letters. Format wasn't fully standardized yet, but generally reads as year and month. Example: 836 = June 1983.

Digits followed by two letters. Letters indicate factory location; digits still represent year and month. Example: 842TH = February 1984, France.

Two letters followed by four digits. The letters come first here, digits second. 1st and 3rd digits = month, 2nd and 4th digits = year. Example: AR1004 = October 2004, France. Auto-decoded above.

Same two-letter, four-digit layout, but the digits shift meaning: 1st and 3rd = production week, 2nd and 4th = year. Example: SD1132 = week 13 of 2012. Auto-decoded above.

Louis Vuitton dropped visible date codes entirely in favor of embedded RFID microchips, readable only in-store. Newer pieces will have no external code to check at all — that's expected, not a red flag.

The letters in any date code should match the "Made in ___" stamp elsewhere on the piece. A mismatch is a clear inconsistency. Louis Vuitton has never published an official factory code list, so any chart (including ours) is compiled from consistent industry documentation, not a brand source.

No serial numbers existed yet. Vintage pieces from this era rely entirely on stamp, hardware, and construction details for dating — there's no code to check.

7-digit serial number on a white sticker inside the bag, matched by an authenticity card. First digit (or first two, later in the range) is the "series" and maps to a production window. Auto-decoded above, series 0–9.

Format expanded to 8 digits to accommodate higher production volume. First two digits are the series. Auto-decoded above, series 10–31.

Chanel replaced the sticker-and-card system with an embedded metal plate carrying a randomized 8-character alphanumeric code. It does not encode a production year, and there's no accompanying authenticity card — a plate with no card is expected, not suspicious.

A correct-looking series number is not proof of authenticity by itself — Chanel has said openly that counterfeiters have access to the same charts. Sticker details worth cross-referencing: whether the zero has a strike-through, whether the one has serifs, and how the sticker reacts under UV light, all of which vary by era in fairly documented ways.

Gucci's leather tag number was never a date code, in any era. It's a style number (top row) and supplier/batch code (bottom row) — the same supplier code appears across many unrelated bags made in the same production run.

10–13 digits, numeric only, no letters. Usually two stacked rows on bags; on small leather goods, a single line split by a dot instead. A code containing letters is a red flag.

A separate black fabric tag with a QR code was added alongside the leather tag. The label number printed on that fabric tag (not the leather one) has a 3-digit year prefix — this is currently the only reliable way to pull a production year from a Gucci bag.

Numbers-only serials, sometimes stamped straight into the leather with no creed patch at all. No date encoded.

Letter, one or two digits, another letter, dash, four-digit number (e.g. H8J-5172). Widely believed to encode production month via the first letter, but published sources disagree enough on the exact cipher that we're not comfortable publishing a decode chart as fact.

Style-number system (e.g. F0951-19659). First set is the searchable style code, second is color/material. No date encoded — this era is identification only, not dating.

Newer alphanumeric formats, still no date encoded.

Search the style number (digits after the dash) alongside "Coach" — matching product photos are a good sign the code is legitimate, even with no date attached.