The blind stamp is the small year letter Hermès presses into its leather goods, usually alongside a craftsman's mark. "Blind" means it is pressed without foil. Look the letter up above, or use the full chart below.
Four cycles
PurseBlog, Vendôme Monte Carlo and the Libas Collective checker agree on the cycles:
- A plain letter, A to Z, from 1945 to 1970.
- A letter in a circle, A to Z, from 1971 to 1996.
- A letter in a square, A to R, from 1997 to 2014.
- A plain letter again from 2015, no longer in alphabetical order.
So the shape matters: a square D is 2000, while a plain A could be 1945 or 2017. The hardware, lining and model settle which.
Letters since 2015
PurseBlog and Vendôme give the modern sequence as T (2015), X (2016), A (2017), C (2018), D (2019), Y (2020), Z (2021), U (2022), B (2023) and W (2024). PurseBlog and the Libas Collective checker add K for 2025, and Libas lists G for 2026. PurseBlog notes that Hermès skipped S in 2015 to throw off counterfeiters.
Transitions and exceptions
PurseBlog reports that some pieces made later in 2014 already carried an R with no surrounding shape, and that in 2011 some Evelyne and Double Sens bags left with "JO" in a rectangle rather than O. From 2016 the stamp on Birkins and Kellys moved to the inside of the side panel.
Special marks
Sacrare and PurseBlog also describe small symbols beside the letter on exotic skins (for example a square for alligator and a caret for porosus crocodile), and a horseshoe for special orders. These are covered in the Birkin and Kelly guide.
What a stamp can't tell you
The blind stamp is the easiest Hermès mark to copy. A correct letter only means the stamp is consistent; it has to agree with the leather, colour and hardware Hermès actually used that year.