Terms of use

It reads a serial number against published records and tells you what year, and sometimes what factory, that number points to. A serial number dates an instrument. It does not prove one is genuine, it does not describe its condition, and it does not establish what it is worth.

Where a price range appears, it is the range of current public asking prices for comparable instruments, drawn from marketplaces. Asking prices are what sellers hope for, not what buyers paid.

The rules behind every answer are compiled from documents, and the methodology page states exactly how. Even so, published records contain mistakes, factories departed from their own schemes, and instruments get renumbered, refinished and rebuilt. Every answer carries its confidence level and the date the data was last checked, so you can judge how far to trust it. Treat everything here as a starting point for your own checks, not as the last word, and take professional advice before you rely on it for a purchase, a sale, or an insurance valuation.

If an answer is wrong, tell us: every result page carries a "Was this right?" question, and what we change as a result is published in the corrections log.

Manufacturer names appear here to say which instruments a page is about, and for no other reason. This is an independent reference resource. No manufacturer has reviewed, approved or endorsed anything on it, and none of them is connected to it in any way.

Look up as many serial numbers as you like. What we ask is that you don't scrape the site or automate bulk requests against it, and that you don't republish our tables or our wording as your own. The compilation took real work, and the pages are ours. Linking to a result, quoting a line with a credit, or sending someone here is welcome.

The site is offered as it is, and it may change or become unavailable without notice.

We publish what our sources support and we show you how sure we are, but we don't warrant that a reading is correct, that the site is available, or that it fits whatever you need it for. A serial number is one piece of evidence about an instrument. Before money changes hands, check the instrument itself, and where the amount warrants it, have someone qualified look at it.

Decisions you make after reading a page here are yours. We can't be responsible for what a year on this site leads you to pay, accept or turn down.

GearSerials is run by Prickly Pear Marketing Co LLC, a Texas limited liability company. These terms, and anything that comes of using the site, are governed by the law of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any disagreement about these terms or about using the site belongs in the state or federal courts located in Texas, and by using the site you agree to that venue.

To the extent the law allows, Prickly Pear Marketing Co LLC is not liable to you for any loss that follows from using the site or relying on anything on it, whether direct, indirect or consequential. If a court finds us liable anyway, our total liability to you is capped at what you paid to use the site, which is nothing. Some places don't let a website limit liability this way; if that is where you are, this paragraph applies only as far as it can.

support@gearserials.com reaches us, whether it's a correction, a question about these terms, or a request about something we hold. What we do with the last of those is set out on the privacy page.

These terms change as the site does, and the date at the top moves when they do. Using the site after that is how you accept the version you find here.