Build date proof › Europe
Geburtsurkunde (birth certificate)
Read this one carefully: it gives the Versanddatum, the date the car was despatched from the factory, not the date it was built. For a car finished in December and shipped in January, it reads the wrong side of the year boundary.
- covers
- Mercedes-Benz
- issuer
- Mercedes-Benz Classic
- cost
- EUR 130 including VAT
- time
- 2-5 working days
Despatch date only
States when the car left the factory, which is later than when it was built. Safe as an upper bound, wrong as a build date.
What you have to supply
The FIN (chassis number) and proof of ownership.
Who can order it
Passenger cars built 1 January 1986 to 31 December 2010 only. AMG models, vans and smart are excluded.
Limits and gaps
The AMG exclusion removes the 190E 2.5-16 Evolution cars and everything AMG-badged - exactly the Mercedes people import.
Notes
It is still a useful document - FIN, type, body variant, engine and gearbox numbers, paint, trim and factory options - and the despatch date is an upper bound on the build date, which is the safe direction. It just is not a build date, and Mercedes does not claim it is.
Checked against the issuer's own page issuer page · retrieved 25 September 2026
Marques this covers
The Build Date Proof Pack
This page tells you which document to order. The pack gets it ordered — and tells you what to do when the answer is that no document exists.
- A ready-to-send request for every archive, in the language it wants
- Exactly which numbers to photograph, and where they are on the car
- What to ask the seller for before you pay the deposit
- The fallback ladder when the manufacturer has no records
- What US, Canadian and Australian officials each accept as proof