How do you tell if an Old Town Kayak is a factory second? I was told it was numbered in the paint code right after the color. Is this true and if so then I guess there is now way to tell after the sticker is gone right? Thanks ahead of time for any help you folks can give. (Still waiting for ice out!!!)
2nd from the factory
Old Town will stamp Blem or Demo into the boat somewhere if was determined to be a second before it left the factory. The Serial Number was assigned to the hull before it was built and will not indicate it to be a second, nor is their a colour code embedded in the serial number.
Seconds are not built, they happen. Perhaps in shipping or in the retail store the boat was scratched or scuffed to make it a second. Those will not be marked as seconds.
Factory seconds
Thanks, and what you say sounds good to me. This dealer we bought a Loon 120 from last year told us that if you look at the paint code sticker that the first munber after the color, say yel1 means its not a blem while yel2 means it’s a second. The serial number is stamped into the hull just like you said and does not reflect the color that I know of. I was wondering if this guy was telling me the truth or not. There are 2 stickers on the hull of new Old Town Kayaks, one is the serial number and the other is the paint code. The serial number is also stamped into the hull but not the paint code. Am I making any sense here or was this dude just pulling my leg?
I forgot about the inventory sku
I forgot that OTC barcodes their boats for warehouse locating purposes. I’ll have to look at some tomorrow to see if your second theory holds up.
Does it really matter? Paddling a 1st and a 2nd quality boat for a week would make the two very hard tell apart. 2nds are usually small cosmetic imperfections. 3rds are the ugly boats and folks like Old Town rarely make boats that bad.
I’ve got an idea
Why not call Old Town and ask them. I even found the toll free number for you! 800-343-1555.