Serial number and date code checkers, brand by brand

No. A code is a manufacturing marking, and counterfeiters copy markings. Read correctly it places a piece in its production run and rules out the crudest fakes, which makes it a floor rather than a verdict: leather, stitching and hardware still need a trained eye.

Because not every brand encodes one. Hermès, Dior and Louis Vuitton put production dates into their markings, so a year can be read out. A Prada serial gives the style, the material and the lot, and never held a date at all: on a Prada the date was printed on the authenticity card. The tiles above say which is which, brand by brand, rather than inventing a year for the ones that have none.

Usually not. Louis Vuitton moved to an embedded microchip in March 2021 and Chanel at about the same time, and Hermès moved its stamp position in 2015. Far more often it is the wrong place, or a recent item.

Because for most brands there is nothing to check. A tool that returns a year for a code holding no year is a guess dressed up as an answer, and several published checkers do exactly that. A brand appears above only once verified reference data sits behind it, so this list is deliberately shorter than the list of brands our team authenticates.

Professional authentication reference material, cross-checked against dated examples and reviewed in-house. Where the sources disagree, the page says so.

It depends on the brand and often on the era. Each brand's own page says where to look, which is usually the answer when someone believes their item carries no marking.

Only indirectly. It places production in an era, and versions of a model do differ in value. It says nothing about condition, completeness or demand.

Check which part of the marking they read. Several published checkers count letters straight through the alphabet, which stopped being correct for Hermès after 2014.