Comment by eqvinox
2 months ago
It would be incredibly funny if these cards are actually genuine and someone just didn't bother to set the clock (year) correctly on their printer.
(But I don't believe this is the case and am not sure if available printers back in 1996 would even emit these patterns in this form. Just noting in this case the device's knowledge of date and time is also a factor of uncertainty.)
In the thread a few prototype cards that turned up before the current ones[1] are checked and they do have 1996 dates in the dots. So at least some printers at the time did have them.
But there’s also a batch identified as “high quality” that don’t have dots on the front printing, which if genuine would point to some printers not doing it at the time.
[1] There were like, 3, and the thread has a spreadsheet showing that well over a thousand prototypes were graded in the last few months. Not sus at all.
It seems unlikely the printer would choose 2024 if set incorrectly though.
One way to check could be to insert the serial number into various printer manufacturer's warranty check pages to see if anything pops up. Some companies (like Lexmark) require a model number first (which was not present for the example), but others (like Brother) will accept just a serial.