Red Font Date Codes on USA Warranty Papers

[springer]

On the back of USA warranty papers, you will often find a group of letters, stamped in red ink, which was used by Rolex to identify when the watch was shipped to a dealer in the USA. The red letter stamps began around 1980 on the typed, USA warranty paper. You may also find some punched, USA warranty papers from the late 1970s with date codes stamped in black ink on the back - but not all had this stamp.

From my experience, and based on the large number of warranty papers in my library of reference material, these date codes consist of either four, five or six numbers.

The code could look something like this: R L H T X

Decipher the red letters code with the corresponding numbers next to each letter:

R -1
O -2
L -3
E -4
X -5
W -6
A -7
T -8
C -9
H -0

R L H T X would indicate 13085 ( 1/30/85, January 30, 1985)

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[shou.biao.kuang]

Great stuff Springer... This is the first time I have seen these codes. Am sure many will benefit from this knowledge