The TD-124 is the only Thorens model this archive can date from a serial number. Its scale runs from 1001–6000 in 1957 to 82,001–95,000 in 1967, and it is the model where the archive most clearly shows what honesty costs: at the changeover from Mk I to Mk II it deliberately refuses to give a single year.
A changeover you can point at
Two documented units sit either side of the line:
- 59,222 — a documented late cream Mk I: the lower bound of the overlap.
- 59,320 — a documented early grey TD-124/II: the upper bound.
So the change happened somewhere in a window of about a hundred units, in the spring of 1965. Enter a number inside that window and the archive answers Mk I or Mk II, spring 1965 and asks for the chassis finish. That is not a hedge; it is the actual state of the evidence, and the source says as much in its own words: it would never identify a turntable from a serial number alone without inspecting the machine.
The visible tell
The Mk II was not given a new serial sequence, so the number cannot separate the two versions at the boundary. The finish can: cream or off-white is the original TD-124 (Mk I); grey is the TD124/II, which also carries a set of detail improvements. Features narrow the date on this deck — part exchanges are common after sixty years, and an early flywheel on a late deck is easily explained by a swapped part.
The ink stamp is a bonus, never the answer
An ink stamp under the platter is community-reported on this model and vanishes with cleaning. The archive carries it as a bonus reading and keeps the chassis serial number as the primary reference. Where the two disagree, the stamp does not win.
Everything else Thorens
No other Thorens model in this archive carries a year: the 125, 126, 160, 165, 145 and 115 are undated here, and the sold prices that do exist come from a January 2023 eBay table. The TD-124 is the exception that proves the archive's rule — one model with dated units, and even there the changeover is reported as a window. See the Thorens archive.