HP cartridges expiry dates

[Daveheenan]

My printer passed away so I've replaced it (with a super HPOfficeJet Pro 8610!) BUT I'm left with a dozen colour and Black HP301 cartridges. The original boxes were recycled a month ago when I put the sealed cello-wrapped (original wraps) on the shelf. A man is buying them off me but says there is no expiry dates. They have numer sequences such as (on two black carts bought same day):  MYS4 160300 140927 0325 and MYS1 160300 140916 2000. Any ideas on cracking this Da Vinci-style code to tell me making date or expiry date!!? Many thanks, Dave.  

[Bob_Headrick · Accepted solution]

The date printed on the cartridge is in YYYYMMDD format as shown in the document here.

The date printed on the outer wrapper may be the date of manufacture, which would be two years before the end of warranty date.

In any case, the date of your cartridges is September (16 or 27) 2014.  I am not sure of the outer package for the cartridge has the end of warranty date or the manufacture date - you may need to open one package to verify which.

Note that the date shown for warranty is not an expiration of the cartridges, only for the warranty.  The HP 301 cartridges do not "expire" in the sense that they would stop working at the expiry date.  There are very few cartridges that enforce cartridge expiration, see the document here for information on cartridge expiration.  

[Daveheenan]

Nice, comprehensive answer and useful link. Thank you - it answers what I asked! Dave.

[Oozoid]

My interpretation of the HP wrapper code is as follows:

The first four digits indicate the country of origin (MYS4 comes from Malaysia).

The next six digits indicate the 'install by' date (160300 means March 2016).

The third set of digits is the manufacturing date, typically 18 months before the 'install by' date. So 140927 means 27th September 2014.

The last four digits? Perhaps some sort of check sum.

If you were to open the wrapper (and it is not airtight so no harm done, really) I expect you will find the 'warranty end' date printed on the cartridge to be 729 days after the manufacturing date - in the case of your first example, 24 September 2016, in the form "2016/09/24".

[estersofy]

YOU'RE PERFECTLY RIGHT....