What’s in an Apple product serial number? Lots of information. And some nice guys in Holland have got a rather good serial search which gives most of it up. Very useful for quickly establishing the model, manufacturing date and related information of an Apple product. Try it out for yourself here.

The first 5 characters of an Apple serial number identify its country of manufacture and manufacture date, by year and week. In an example where an Apple serial number starts CK123… , CK would indicate Cork in Ireland as the country of manufacture (or assembly), 1 identifies 2001 as the year of production and 23 means the 23rd week of the yaer, in this case 2001. I’m not sure what happens pre-2000, but post-2000 the first 5 characters of the Apple product serail numbers follow this pattern where the first two characters are the country of manufacture, the third is the year of production, and the fourth and fifth are the week of production.