Serial number lookup
Epiphone serial number lookup
Decode an Epiphone serial to find the year, the month and — where the factory code is one we can identify — the plant and country that built it.
How Epiphone numbering works
Epiphone serials are, on the face of it, the easiest in this whole reference to read: a factory code, then the year, then the month, then a sequence. A serial that decodes to month 13 has been mis-read, which makes the format self-checking in a way Gibson's is not.
The difficulty is the factory codes. Epiphone has never published a complete list, and instruments have been built under contract in Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia and elsewhere, sometimes moving between plants mid-model. The mapping used here is maintained collectively by owners and technicians rather than by the manufacturer, and we mark it as such wherever it appears in a result.
Because of that, an Epiphone result is often best read as two separate claims of different strength: the date, which the number itself supports, and the factory, which depends on a community reference that may be incomplete for your instrument.
Key facts
- Factory code
- One or two letters at the start of the serial identifying the contract plant.
- Year and month
- Four digits after the factory code: two for the year, two for the month.
- Month check
- A value above 12 in the month position means the serial has been mis-read or does not follow this format.
- Not one system
- Elitist, USA Collection and some Chinese production have used entirely separate numbering.
What goes wrong
- Assuming the factory code identifies the country reliably — several plants operated in more than one country over time.
- Reading a serial that has no letter prefix at all with this format. Some Epiphones use plain sequential numbers that this system cannot date.
- Confusing an Epiphone-branded Gibson-era instrument from Kalamazoo with modern Epiphone production. They share a name and nothing else.
Formats this lookup reads
Every format below has been sourced, documented and covered by tests before shipping. Formats we cannot verify are deliberately absent.
| Format | Period | Confidence | Reviewed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Factory code with year and month | 1990–2030 | medium | 29 July 2026 |