Thank you!!
New information for me that this is already public.
Is it known how to decipher the date code and if there is more information about it??
There has been a lot of speculation about this (I can't remember which thread we discussed this in), maybe
@Gazoo or
@ArthurEld or
@AussieSim recalls where that conversation took place.
My Recollection:
The primary theory at first was the date code (first 3 digits of the vertical barcode) was a 'hexadecimal code' (which is a 'base 16' number system 0-9 A-F)
Under that theory, In the example above:
87C = Year-Month-Day = 2018-7-12 (C is 12 in hex)
So the theory matched the one example.
But then we started checking more date codes against this theory and finding that some used values beyond hex value 88P or 87R for instance, so then the theory became it was a modified version of hex, where the values went from 0 to V (V corresponding to 31 or the last day of the longest month). However its unclear if this is the case or not, its hard to draw any certain conclusions from just the single data point we have.
Adding to the confusion, a couple of the resellers were questioned on this when they represented cells as 'new 2020 cells' that we thought were from 2018. They are adamant that they and we cannot read the barcodes and only EVE can decipher them. Of course, whether it is true or not it is in there best interest to say this. Its entirely possible that they are right, that they are wrong but being honest, or that they are wrong and being dishonest. The document I posted with the key for the barcode is the newer version of the cells, so its possible the resellers have never seen this document, and older versions don't include the key.
Long story short, there is still a lot of uncertainty.