1974

see: http://www.cymbal.wiki/wiki/Paiste_Serial_Numbers

For selling purposes that's called a Black Label 2002. Red Labels came on the scene later, and some people specifically hunt for these early ones by name: Black Label.

Alas your reply has inaccuracies and works correctly about 80% of the time at best. That's why I gave the link to the page where the detail is given in full.

http://www.cymbal.wiki/wiki/Paiste_Serial_Numbers

The main differences come in at determining the decade. If all you use is the first digit of the 6 digit serial number you may end up with the wrong decade. The research team working on all things Paiste would see a few cymbals a week misidentified as to decade. It seems to matter most with 6 digit serial numbers with no prefix which start with 0 or 1. They are misidentified as 1970 or 1971 but they are 1980 or 1981. The same problem occurs with 1980 vs 1990, but people don't seem to care so much about that. It all traces back to serial numbers not changing their structure on exact decade boundaries. It happens a year or two into each decade. But people seem to insist on simplifying it to decades.

Here is an older resurrected thread about that which goes into a lot of detail to correct misinformation (even misinformation which comes from Paiste customer services as you will see). For the 2011 posts you will see the same oversimplified serial number information. Later there are the 2019 posts where Tod Little and I present the details we have which define the pattern. This is done in response to AussieVintageDrummer who prefers to stick with the older less accurate story. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion but not their own set of facts.

http://www.vintagedrumforum.com/showthread.php?t=19569

Correct identification must include the prefix which indicates decade. My "quick overview" for this goes

Serials start with 6 digits in the later half of 1972, and then move to 8 digits in 1997.

blank above a serial number means 1972 to 1982 (the first digit is the year)

PAISTE 2002 means 1981 to 1986

PAISTE means 1985 - 1991

pAisTe means 1991 - 1997

8 digit serials are 1997 - 2011 (the first two digits are the year)

2011 to present serial moved to the bottom and is done by laser

Note I've used 2002 but it is whatever the series name is. Handy to identify series when all the ink has gone. Full details are given in the link.

And finally, this method does not work for German serial numbers. Todd Little has come a long way on working those out but they have a different decode method.