Serial number dating / Pianos
Piano serial number dating
How old is your piano? Enter its serial number and the maker, and we read it against the maker’s own production records to tell you the year it was built.
Can't read a digit? Type ? in its place. Looked-up serials are kept, never tied to you. How it works
Type the serial or code from the instrument. We read it as you type.
Date by maker
About piano serial numbers
How piano dating works
A piano serial number is not a code with the date hidden in it, the way a guitar serial often is. It is a running count: the factory stamped its instruments in sequence and, year by year, published roughly which number it had reached. So to date a piano you find the year whose published serial your number falls just after. We read it the same way the maker’s own records do.
Two things make it more than one simple table. First, a maker often ran separate number series for different factories or lines, told apart by a letter at the front of the serial, and the wrong series dates the piano badly, so the letter is read first. Second, the published numbers are approximate year markers, so a serial near a boundary is within a year and one that falls in a gap between published years is a range, not a false single year. Every result says which.
How sure is it
A piano year is a strong guide, not proof. The serial dates the instrument only to within a year or so, and less precisely where a maker’s output was small or a whole decade barely moved. When a serial cannot pin a year, we say so. For the makers with a public lookup, the result links to it to confirm.