[ninjavanish]

Actually most manufacturers will apply a date code to their boxes in some way or another. This aides the company itself in a lot of ways... like for instance... say they had a quality issue with a particular cigar... knowing the date codes gives them the ability to research the issue and hopefully isolate the batch of tobacco from that particular date that was used in making those cigars. It may end up that it wasn't the tobacco but perhaps the roll... or it could be any number of reasons but knowing when those cigars were manufactured is imperative to being able to know if all are bad... or if it's just that batch.

However... the date code is often a specialized "code" for lack of a better term... for instance general cigars have a unique code that you have to know how to decipher it to be able to read it. Otherwise it just looks like random letters and numbers.