Silly Question about Serial Numbers

[UOPJohnny]

Okay, I just can't figure it out. I feel sorta developmentally challenged over this.

So when you see saxophones for sale/displayed online, why is the serial number represented with X's? That is to say, why would 85650 be typed out as 85XXX? Are there con artists that steal the identities of saxophones (jus' kiddin!)?

haha... that was a joke... but, my friends.... why?!?

:oops:

[Jack W.]

I don't know if this is the only reason for this practice, but I'm led to understand that one reason for it is to avoid fraud, as you indicate. If someone were to divulge the entire serial number of one of his horns, an unscrupulous person could come after him and claim that this horn was stolen. And this could not be disproven apart from original sales receipts etc.

Probably someone else could explain it better than I can, though. :)

[1saxman]

You got it, Jack, and except in extremely rare circumstances, the serial number minus the last 3 or 4 digits is all that's needed to identify the model and year of manufacture for purposes of sales or inquiries.

[Helen]

Because I have a number of vintage horns that I have bought over the years, I'm always on the cautious side. I never devulge the full serial number.

Even if I had bills of sale for all the old horns I bought (which I don't), how could I prove that the person/company that I bought it from had the right to sell it? Many of my horns were made in the 1920s...Good luck in finding a paper trail back to the original owner...

There are way too many con artisits out there that would try stuff given half a chance...I just won't give them the opportunity...Call me jaded or cynical...Oh well... :evil:

[Pete]

Always keep your sales receipts.

Seriously, I got an e-mail that said something like the following:

"I cannot access the pictures on your website because they're in the form of '123xxx' and my company's firewall blocks anything that's XXX. Could you please rename all your pictures?"

a. Poor firewall smut-blocker. THAT'S a company that's gonna go out of business.
b. I'm not gonna rename 1.5gb of pictures and fix all my links.

==========

Anyhow, I really can't see how divulging an entire serial number can possibly hurt, especially for instruments that are "vintage". So, maybe someone challenges your ownership to that 75 year old Conn stencil. Maybe that horn was owned by the challenger's husband and got stolen 50 years ago and has tremendous sentimental value. Seriously, it sounds like, "If I own a stolen horn, I don't wanna find out about it, so I'm not gonna tell anyone else the serial number."

(Now for new horns, I can understand not printing the entire serial number: if the horn's under warranty, the manufacturer needs it to do repairs/replacements. I can imagine someone calling Yamaha to try to get their YAS-23 that's 1 week out of warranty fixed by using his friend's YAS-25's serial number.)

Additionally, for serious sax research, the first number or two of the serial is hardly sufficient. The last number is rarely important, except when there may have been only a few horns of whichever model produced (Leblanc pro horns, Jimmy Dorsey Selmers, etc.). I've seen horns advertised as, "Serial number 2xx,xxx". There could have been a lot of variations between 200,000 and 299,999 and dozens of years could have been covered by that range! There are also many manufacturers that only produced a couple hundred horns per year, so even "123,xxx" isn't sufficient (SML, Buffet, Dolnet, etc.).

[Docax]

Avoiding fraud is probably the most important reason, but I'm sure another is that the poster doesn't have the sax at hand by the computer, and doesn't remember the entire serial #. I know the first 3 digits and year of manufacture for all my vintage horns, but not the whole thing.

[UOPJohnny]

hmmph.

Personally, I always feel special when I have a special secret. 8)



... thanks for the info, by the way! It's good stuff to have.

[amiri]

that's hilarioud to me--it never even occured to me that divulging my vintage horn's full serial number was a security threat. I saw that no one else gave full numbers and figured it was because the first two or three were the ones that mattered, so I followed suit. (It also bears saying that laziness prevented me from thinking to type more than xxx.)

saxpics it's amusing that someone asked you to rename a few hundred photos on your site because of their cheap smut-blocker at their job. Obviously you don't have anything else better to do with your time these days than to change filenames....