Guide For Coach Product Grades and Markings
- Thread starter katev
- Start date
My pleasure, I hope that the coachies find it useful and add more information to it!
I am glad that you have found the information useful, I have learned so much from my fellow TPFers so I am just trying to pay it forward!
This helps me a lot..thanks! There's so much I am learning. And I feel I've been learning at a crash course pace because I have only collected/bought Coach for a year now.
Thanks, I am still learning too! I bought my first Coach bag in May 2009.
I have learned a lot from the generous TPFers! Lately I have been carrying a 7 page printout of Hyacinth's collected wisdom around in my (Coach) bag to help me avoid buying any more fakes!
:tpfrox:
Thank you, thank you, katev!! I'm going to print this out so I have it handy for reference. Your time time and effort spent on this is much appreciated!
My pleasure! I hope that you find the information useful!
I wanted to draw your attention to some comments that were made about my guide's references to the department store codes. It seems that my statement that N and M codes were sold at Nordstrom's and Macy's may not always be correct. The statements below were posted on the Authenticate this Coach thread shortly after I posted the guide.
Regarding KateV's Guide For Coach Product Grades and Markings
Hyacinth:
Good information, although I'm not sure about the various department store codes. To actually use the first letter of the store name just seems too logical. And Coach is seldom logical. And maybe they changed colors but the lettering and drawstrings on my outlet dustbags for keychains were usually red. Nice job!
KateV
I’ve just remembered, the small outlet dustbags with the brown letters and strings are from the Men's Outlet. You are right, the regular outlet uses red letters and strings. And I did some research and found references to N and M codes for Nordstrom and Macy Department Store exclusives, but perhaps those were incorrect assumptions?
BeenBurned:
I've seen bags as Macy's with M codes also.
Hyacinth:
I've seen Z mentioned as both Nordies and TJ Maxx, and W for Hudson's which I'm assuming is the old Hudson's Bay. The only Ns I remember are those old Nordie Ns that were in some sort of brackets. But I never shop at any of those stores except for TJ so I've only just seen the ones on Ebay.
BeenBurned:
The "Z" bags I've seen have been at discounters, i.e., Nordstroms Rack, TJ Maxx, and prior to its recent demise, Filene's Basement. I've never seen a Z at a full priced department store.
Rambler:
Hudson's may have been one of the stores that joined to form Dayton-Hudson dept stores, who were then bought by Marshall Fields who were bought out by Macy's. Dayton-Hudson was the parent corporation of Target.
Hyacinth:
I thought about that. But these store or retailer letters are pretty recent, just in the last year or two, and Dayton-Hudson was sold maybe 10 years ago at least. Also, the poster who mentioned seeing a W in a bag from Hudson's lives in Canada, so I'm assuming she means Hudson's Bay Company that everyone in Canada just calls Hudson's now. The post was just made here at tPF in the last few months.
How can you tell what year the Coach handbag was made ? Thank you for all your info, it has really helped me !
Glad you found it useful.
In newer bags you can read the year of manufacture in the first part of the serial number, but it can be difficult or impossible to accurately date some of the vintage bags. Take a look at Hyacinth's Guide at the link below for all the info on serial numbers.
http://reviews.ebay.com/Coach-Serial-Numbers-the-Basic-Facts?ugid=10000000034886433
