Beretta Date-Code Lookup

Enter the Beretta date code — the date code stamped next to the proof marks — on shotgun barrels (often under the chambers, may require breaking the gun down or removing the barrel), on pistol frames near the trigger guard or on slide/frame behind the grip — NOT the serial number — to estimate the year of proof. A serial number is refused, because the year is not inside it. Beretta is a date-code maker, not a serial-chart maker: the code is stamped beside the proof marks — on shotgun barrels, often under the chambers, so the action may have to be broken down or the barrel removed; on pistols, on the frame near the trigger guard or behind the grip plates. Beretta publishes no serial→year chart: its service page offers a serial lookup form, and what that form returns has never been established. So enter the code, not the serial — and read it as the year of proof of the barrel, which is what the stamp's own authority records, not the year the gun was made.

How dating a Beretta by its date code works

Most serial charts give one number per year. Beretta is different, and using the wrong method gives the wrong year — so it is worth knowing what the chart actually asserts.

the barrel date code — year of proof of the barrel, Roman numerals 1945–1974, letter pairs from 1975, two digits from 2020

Every Italian portable firearm passes a national proof house before it can be sold (law l.186/1960), and the proof suite carries a date code. The published ladders run in three notation families: Roman numerals I = 1945 to XXX = 1974, boxed capital pairs AA = 1975 onward (AA=1975 … CZ=2020), and from 01/06/2020 the last two digits of the year in a rectangle — 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 as printed — by the Banco Nazionale di Prova's own published rule. The letter alphabet skips letters: G, J, K, O, Q, R, V, W, X and Y were never printed as the second character, and the skips are part of the published walk, not a puzzle to solve. One band is open: Italy's national proof table says that before 1954 the year of proof was stamped in Arabic digits and starts its own table at X=1954, while Beretta's dealer ladders print Roman I … IX for 1945–1953. The two published tables disagree across exactly that band; this grid follows the dealer ladders because they are the only published sources that cover it, and a four-digit year typed into the lookup is refused with the conflict stated.

No manufacturer chart exists, so this ladder is three independent dealer/author tables re-opened 2026-10-18, cross-checked code by code, plus the proof house's rule and printed table. Where the sources disagree, the disagreement ships on this page instead of being averaged. One ladder omits two rows of the Roman block and prints XVII=1962: the complete block ships, because two ladders and the proof table print it, and the variant is recorded here rather than deleted. The forum chart's ‘XXIII - 1972’ is its own duplicated row (the same chart already prints XXIII=1967), so 1972 ships as XXVIII. 1986 ships as AP: the ‘AO’ reading is the disputed one and is refused by name — and O is not a letter this alphabet prints at all. CP=2016 ships flagged: one dealer table alone prints it, corroborated by the proof table.

The stamp also appears in a hybrid shorthand, Roman tens with an Arabic unit, and the sources document exactly three such forms: XX7=1971, XX8=1972, XX9=1973. This tool reads only those, showing the equivalence (XX8 → XXVIII →1972), and refuses a marking that merely has the shape. After 2019 the registers split: the dealers' tables continue the letter walk (DA=2021 … DM=2030, the last five from a single table), while the proof house — the body that actually strikes the mark — stamps two digits. Both registers are published here, named and kept separate below the main grid, because no photograph of a Beretta barrel stamped with a D-series pair has ever been produced. What gets refused rather than rounded: pre-1945 markings (a different system whose one published example is IXXII = January 1922), non-Italian production (the ladders exclude it in their own words), digits beyond the printed 26, letters beyond DM, and any serial number — for Beretta the year is not in the serial.

A different register: the dealers' continuation, contradicted by the proof house. These 10 rows (DA…DM, 2021–2030) come from the dealers' ladders — while the body that actually strikes the stamp, the Banco Nazionale di Prova, says that from 01/06/2020 the year-of-proof mark is the last two digits of the year in a rectangle, and its printed table runs 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. Those digits are in the grid above. No field photograph of a Beretta barrel stamped with a D-series pair has ever been produced, the first letter D never appears in the official alphabet, and DF, DH, DI, DL, DM are printed by one dealer table alone. Both registers ship here, named, because the honest form of a contradiction is both sides — which form a real 2020+ barrel carries is NOT ESTABLISHED.

No maker-published worked example exists — and the two field readings that do exist are reproduced. Beretta publishes no chart, so nothing here is maker-grade, and the source file records exactly two field-sourced readings, both from one shotgun forum thread. The decoder answers both exactly: a Beretta Urika 2 barrel stamped CD reported proofed 2009, and a barrel stamped XX7 read as ‘71 — the second through the published hybrid mapping (XX7 → XXVII →1971), not by inventing a rule. The AP/AO correction sits in the same thread, quoted verbatim: ‘Beretta’s info states for example, “AO” for 1986 … that’s incorrect, it’s actually “AP” …’ Nothing else is claimed as verified.

If your model is not listed, the published chart we hold does not cover it — the tool will say so rather than guess.

Questions

Why does my serial number not give a year?

It falls in a gap between the published ranges, or in a model year the chart does not cover — the tool will show the nearest documented range instead of guessing. A public lookup should not invent an answer. For a Beretta: the code is usually invisible without breaking the action down or removing the barrel, and three notation families plus a boxed-digit era make it the hardest reading in this family of makers. The mark may be pre-1945 (a different system, refused); it may end in one of the ten letters the alphabet never prints (refused, never interpolated); it may be AO, the disputed 1986 reading (refused with its dispute); it may be a hybrid that is not one of the three published shorthands (refused, not generalised); it may be a plain stamped date on an older pistol, which is not a code at all; or it may be a serial number, which this tool refuses because Beretta publishes no serial chart — its own route is a lookup form whose return content is not established. None of these is rounded to a neighbouring year, and the Roman block, the hybrids and the boxed digits are read as the forms they are.

How accurate is this?

The ranges are reproduced exactly as published in three published dealer/author ladders plus the national proof house's own rule. That is not a factory letter — for a definitive date, the factory records are the authority. The Beretta ladder is dealer/author-sourced, not maker-published: three independent tables that agree on every code they all print, plus the national proof house's own rule and printed table for the 2020+ register. That is an honest grade, not a factory record. The code dates the proof of the barrel: barrels are separately provable, replaceable and re-provable (the proof suite has its own re-proof punch), so a re-proved barrel carries a later year than the arm, and ‘year of manufacture’ is a claim stronger than the source — no Beretta statement exists either way. The ladders apply to Italian production only, in their own words; the database here carries 253 Beretta rows spanning 1915 to 2030 (measured 2026-10-18 in the working copy, 33 of them before 1945) and its own manufacturer column is machine-harvested and carries known errors, so it is never an authority about proof marks. And from 2021 the two registers genuinely disagree: the dealers' letters, or the proof house's two digits, with no field photo behind the letters.

Where does the data come from?

three independent dealer/author ladders re-opened 2026-10-18 (Blue Fieldsports, Emmett & Stone and the Shotgunworld collectors' chart), plus the Banco Nazionale di Prova's own two-digit rule and the Conarmi printing of the Italian year-of-proof table — Beretta publishes no date-code chart, so this ladder is dealer/author-sourced: three independent tables cross-checked code by code, and every place they disagree is printed on this page instead of being averaged (XVII=1961 vs 1962, the chart's own duplicated 1972 row, AP vs AO for 1986, CP=2016 from one table alone). The 2020 register and the boxed-digit form come from the body that actually strikes the mark, Italy's national proof house — which is also precisely why the dealers' post-2020 letter tail is shown flagged and separate: it contradicts that body's published rule, and no field photo of a D-series barrel has ever been produced. The code dates the PROOF of the barrel, because that is what the stamp records; no Beretta statement says what it dates.

Records & archives

A chart says what the factory serials mean. Our records note for Beretta says who actually holds the factory records today, whether a letter of authenticity can be ordered, and what it costs and takes — observed, not assumed.

The Beretta records & archives note →

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