NES console serial # question...can you tell build year from it?

[smokehouse]

Has anyone busted it down? Can you tell a year of the unit's production from it?

[ApolloBoy]

I've never seen a decoder for the serial number, but you can roughly determine when it was made by looking at the some of the chips on the motherboard. For example, if one of the chips has a 4-digit number that says "8649", that means it was made around the 49th week of 1986.

[Ed Oscuro]

But the time between when an off-the-shelf part is manufactured and put into a system can fluctuate considerably...

[ApolloBoy]

But the time between when an off-the-shelf part is manufactured and put into a system can fluctuate considerably...

That's true, but it can still give you a rough idea of the timeframe of the system's manufacture.

[Ed Oscuro]

That's true, but it can still give you a rough idea of the timeframe of the system's manufacture.
The key is the manufacturer's stockpile of whatever part is being looked at.

For the NES, a system that moved so many units, I'd say it's a fair enough judge of time, especially near the middle of its lifespan (and I guess it used enough parts in common with the Famicom that by '86 the FC was using up a lot of newly-made parts). For a less-popular system I'd be careful to use the idea, though.