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How to date your bottle of Chanel No. 5?

post #1 of 9
3/28/10 at 5:48pm
Thread Starter 
Hello,

Today I purchased a bottle of Chanel No. 5 eau de toilette at an antiques store. It is 4 fl. oz. (118 ml). The box is white with "EAU DE TOILETTE" written in silver ink above "No. 5" (which is in black ink). A few spaces below is "CHANEL" in black ink. The writing on the front of the box is flat.
The back of the box has the double-C logo in silver ink. The logo is slightly engraved. Some spaces below by "CONTAINS: SD ALCOHOL 39-C, WATER, FRAGRANCE, FD&C RED #40, FD&C YELLOW #5, D&C GREEN #5." Below this is "Chanel Inc. New York, N.Y. 10019," followed by the number 531016, which is also written on the bottom of the box.
As for the bottle itself, it is a splash bottle without a spray. The cap is black with the double-C logo engraved into it. The label is white with "EAU DE TOILETTE NO. 5 CHANEL" printed on it with black ink. There is the double-C logo engraved into the bottle on one side. The NY address is printed on the bottle itself on the back, on the very bottom.
I'm sorry to give such a wordy description! I'd really appreciate any help as to the date of this bottle. My guess is mid-70s-early 90s.

Thank you very much for your help.
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post #2 of 9
3/29/10 at 10:32am
Welcome, Violetamber!

According to this website, which calculates dates for some perfumes and cosmetics lines based on the product codes on the box/bottle, your perfume is from 2004-2005. The site also noted "your input may not be correct" when I entered the product code, so it may not be providing correct info.

http://sites.google.com/site/datecal...nglishhomepage

Hopefully someone else will respond with helpful info for you, too. You gave a very good description of the packaging.
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post #3 of 9
3/31/10 at 4:29pm
Thread Starter 
Thank you for your awesome reply! 2004, eh? I'll continue hunting for some real vintage Chanel to add to my baby-small collection
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post #4 of 9
4/1/10 at 4:20am
I'm not sure how reliable that website is for dating your bottle. I could be wrong about this, but as far as I know, modern Chanel bottles have a four digit serial number. That website returns the same date if you just enter the first four digits. Once the first two digits are the same as yours, it will return May 2004.

I've been trying to figure out the way the numbers work, since I recently bought a new bottle of Chanel Pour Monsieur which that site said was manufactured on 2001, but it couldn't have been. It looks like Chanel batch numbers go in cycles of one hundred months, with 00xx indicating December 1999, and 99xx March 2008. This presumably means that they had to start again with 00 two years ago, and if that's the case, it means my bottle with a serial number 2203 was manufactured in January 2010, and not October 2001 -which would make sense. If the datecalculator is reliable, and if Chanel always used the first two numbers to identify the year and month of manufacture, it still wouldn't tell you which 100 month cycle your bottle was made in.

Of course it is also possible that none of the dates on the datecalculator site make any sense at all, so don't take any of the above too seriously
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post #5 of 9
4/1/10 at 4:30am
tried carbon dating? lol
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post #6 of 9
4/1/10 at 5:05pm
My apologies!

I ran my own Chanel No. 5 bottle's numbers through there, and I got a date of December 2000, and that same error that said "maybe your input is not correct." I'm positive the date returned by this website is not correct. My Chanel No. 5 was purchased brand new, still sealed, from an authorized retailer (in person) back in May 2009.
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post #7 of 9
4/1/10 at 5:10pm
How to date your bottle of Chanel No. 5? Ask it out, and bring it some nice flowers.

Happy April Fools... I'm sorry... that was awful, I know.

Welcome to Basenotes, I'm so happy you are here!!
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post #8 of 9
4/1/10 at 11:46pm
My older bottle of Chanel eau de toilette has a paper label with chanel engraved 4 times at bottom in the glass. I haven't researched how old it is yet
I didn't have much luck with that site as to age, I don't think serial #'s were on bottles that are older.
.
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post #9 of 9
4/2/10 at 2:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by NebraskaLovesScent View Post

My apologies!

I ran my own Chanel No. 5 bottle's numbers through there, and I got a date of December 2000, and that same error that said "maybe your input is not correct." I'm positive the date returned by this website is not correct. My Chanel No. 5 was purchased brand new, still sealed, from an authorized retailer (in person) back in May 2009.

If they go on cycles of one hundred months, the serial numbers of bottles made in December 2000 should start with the same two digits as on bottles made in April 2009. I hope I got the sums right ;p
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