Hermes Date Reference Guide
Unlike the other famous maison, it is possible to accurately date, to the year, the age of your Hermès bag. There are rare instances in which a bag can be authentic and also without any stamp but those are indeed rare instances and typically either are very old and pre-date this system and/or have so much wear and tear that the stamp will have been worn off. There are instances where certain “gifts” or personal items are not stamped but these are also very rare. There are unfortunately far more instances of sellers adding this as marketing language more than factual provenance.
How to read the stamp
To understand the reference guide below, the shape and the letter should be read in conjunction as certain letters will be repeated throughout the ages. Hence without the shape, it would be impossible to accurately date the age your bag, sometimes a certain letter can appear 20 years apart or more! Take for example the letter “A”, it appears in 1945, 1971 and 1997, so to distinguish between these vastly different periods, the shape is necessary and general understanding of materials/colorways.
Those in the industry will refer to the combination of letter and shape as the “stamp” of the bag which can be confusing as there is also a “heatstamp” of a logo so it is important to clarify when using the term “stamp”.
As of the time of posting, generally speaking, the main shapes for vintage bags are circle and square or just the letter with no shape.
Square Stamp
Circle Stamp
Stamp Placement
There is generally a similar placement for vintage Kelly or Birkin bags. For other models in lesser production, they can appear in a variety of places. There is actually very little standardisation on models outside of the classic styles.
You can see examples of these below taken from actual items previously sold in our inventory, they will appear in the folds or even in the inside pockets or zippers.. As I sometimes like to say, you can really tell the experience of a seller from their ability to quickly locate the heatstamp of any non BKC bag.
