Ask about a Hermès bag online and someone will tell you to check the blind stamp. It is good advice, but it is usually given without explaining what the stamp is, what it does and does not tell you, and why the charts circulating online should be treated with caution. Here is how our team in Japan actually reads these marks.
What a blind stamp is
A blind stamp is a small mark pressed into the leather without ink or foil, so it is visible only as an impression. On Hermès bags it indicates the year of production. Historically this has been a letter, and for long stretches that letter was enclosed within a shape — a square or a circle in different periods, and no shape at all in others. In more recent years Hermès has again used a letter without a surrounding shape.
Because the mark is pressed rather than printed, it is often faint. On well-used bags it can be almost invisible without raking light across the leather at a low angle.
The craftsman mark is a separate thing
Alongside the year mark you will usually find one or more additional small marks. These identify the artisan who made the bag and, on some pieces, the workshop. They are not part of the date and they do not decode into a year. Buyers frequently conflate the two and then conclude a bag is wrong because the marks do not match a chart.
There may also be marks relating to service history. A bag that has been through Hermès' own refurbishment can carry an additional stamp, which is a record of care, not a defect.
Where to look
Placement varies by model and era. Common locations include:
- On or near the underside of a strap
- Inside the bag on an interior side panel or seam area
- Under a closure flap or behind a strap keeper
- On the reverse of a strap attachment
Tilt the bag under a single light source and move it slowly. A blind stamp appears and disappears depending on angle, which is exactly why so many listings show it badly photographed or not at all.
Why we do not publish a year chart
The letter-to-year system has changed more than once over the decades, and Hermès does not publish an official mapping. The tables you find online are reconstructions assembled by collectors and resellers, and they disagree with each other around the transition points. They are useful as a rough orientation and unreliable as a verdict.
What is more useful than a chart is internal consistency. Ask whether the apparent era of the stamp agrees with everything else:
- Was that model in production then?
- Was that leather offered in that colour at that time?
- Does the hardware style and finish belong to that period?
- Does the visible ageing of the leather match the claimed age?
- Is the stamp impressed cleanly and evenly, sitting flat in the leather rather than looking scratched or added to the surface?
A bag whose stamp contradicts its own construction is worth a hard question. A bag whose stamp is faint but consistent with everything else is normal.
The limit of this check
No single marker proves authenticity. Counterfeits improve constantly, blind stamps included, and professional in-hand authentication weighing the stamp against stitching, leather grain, hardware and construction is what actually settles the question. Treat the stamp as one signal worth examining, never as a test the bag has passed.
Stitching tells you more
If we had to choose one area over the blind stamp, it would be the saddle stitching. Hermès hand-saddle-stitches with two needles, which produces a distinctive slightly angled stitch line that machine stitching does not replicate. Look at the evenness of the angle, the tension along a run, and how the stitching behaves at corners and where it turns. It is far harder to imitate consistently than a small pressed mark.
How we approach Hermès
Every Hermès piece we list is inspected in hand in Japan and photographed as it is, including the blind stamp where it is legible and a note where it is not. We do not assign a production year we cannot support.
If you are looking at Hermès for the first time, our guide to vintage Hermès without the waitlist covers the models that are actually attainable, and the Picotin guide goes deeper on one of them. Current stock is in the Hermès collection, with scarves in scarves.