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Manufacturing date codes from Czechoslavakia

Another country that put dates on its releases is Czechoslovakia (I am using past tense, as the country no longer exists). On most releases from this country from the late 1960s - early 1990s you can find a so called "manufacturing date code", or something similar to that.

The page for the Opus label on Discogs says:

"Most Czechoslovak vinyl records pressed between ca. 1967 and 1992 include a three-digit code on the side A center label. The first two digits represent the year, the third digit the half-year of the pressing. For example, a record with code '75 2' on the label has been manufactured in the 2nd half of 1975."

and goes on to explain that this code does not necessarily mean that the record was also released in that year, but that it could have been held back for whatever reason. But it does mean that it can be used for checking the release year to see if it is perhaps wrong (too early). so I did just that.

I looked at a few things in the data (up until, but not including, December 1 2017):
  1. how many releases in Discogs from Czechoslovakia have a manufacturing date that matches the release year
  2. how many releases have a manufacturing date that is later than the release year (indicating either a wrong manufacturing date, or a wrong release year)
  3. how many releases have a manufacturing date that is earlier than the release year
The first question was easy to answer: in 14,488 releases they match which is probably good news. The second question: 94 releases where the manufacturing date code is later than the year in released. I already know that in at least one of these cases it was the submitter who used the wrong manufacturing date ("off by one" on the keyboard) and the release year was correct, but there are also some where the manufacturing date is correct according to the pictures.

The answer to the last question: 52 releases. Here it could be that the records were already pressed, but not yet distributed, or errors in the release date or in the manufacturing code.

I did not check how many releases there are that could possibly have this code, but where it was not entered on the release page.

Checks for this have been added to my scripts and findings have been posted by a friend to the Czechoslovak forum on Discogs.

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