I just emailed Yamaha about my D-20 kit and anything before 1980 is a guess. Physical details of the drums date them more accurately.

I will say those are newer than mine which are placed as early 70's with 1xxx serial range.

Any pictures for us to evaluate?

Not sure if it will work on all Yamaha's, but try this:

http://www.yamaha.com/yamahadrums/drumvault/default.asp

Thx for the tips gents, but i,ve come up empty again. My shells are a brass finish with grey interiors. Thats all i have until they arrive next week.

And the "traceable" Yamaha serial numbers start at 1980, so you are between 1970 and 1980. Probably closer to 1980.

On my kit, the floor tom and ride tom have the same serial number. Does your kit have shared numbers too?

All are 8768 except the snare which is 8745.

This is interesting.

I suspect a complete kit would have the same serial on all the drums, but this sort of confirms it for me.

The strange thing is, I am pretty well convinced, based on some details when I picked up my kit, that my drums were always a complete kit (except I did not get a snare). However, my bass drum has a different style badge with a different number.

When I asked Yamaha about this detail, they said that it was a supply thing and that yamaha did not make their badges in house at the time. Therefore they were somewhat at the mercy of their suppliers. This does not explain the different style of the badge, but may give plausibility that my kit is not an orphan kit.

Anyway, I atached pics below. The common badge and the unusual one I had not seen anywhere else on my bass drum. I suspect you have the 'normal' Y badges on your kit.

Nice link! Clapping Happy2