My R3 arrived yesterday, February 28. I preordered it on September 14th, a couple of hours after preorders were first accepted. If I'm interpreting the serial number correctly, it is surprisingly low - just over 500. Is the number of units produced so far really that low?
Are you simply assuming the last six digits are sequential? If so, my R3 received in late November was produced after yours. And my EOS R ordered about four months post-launch (and delivered the next day) was about the 2000th one produced. I’m skeptical of that interpretation.
Recent Canon xD (where 'x' is a single digit number) body serial numbers usually have a 4+4+4 format. The second group of four digits indicate the series (if a part supplier of a significant part is replaced, or a part design is updated they go to the next series number). The first two digits of the first group seem to run sequentially within each second group number. The third and fourth digit of the first group is almost always the same for any particular model number. The third quartet seem to be sequential, but lower numbers (e.g. 1218 or 3257) are much more common than higher ones (e.g. 7942, 5749), at least for xD models (as opposed to higher volume x0D, or xx00D models).
For the 5DMark IV, for instance, the middle quartet seems to ALWAYS end with two zeros. For the first quartet the third digit is ALMOST ALWAYS "2" and the fourth digit is ALMOST ALWAYS "0"
Look at used 5D Mark IV bodies on MPB. There are about 60 listed for sale that have legible serial numbers in the product photos. I saw none that did not have "00" for the seventh and eighth digits. I saw four that did not have "20" as the third+fourth digits:
(spaces added to make the 12 digit numbers more readable as 4+4+4 numbers)
1121 5500 0126
1280 5500 5498
1750 5600 4664
3580 3700 4812
Of the roughly sixty serial numbers, only six end with four digits greater than 5000. Only one has a number higher than 5999 for the last four digits (0220 2100 7942). Greater than 75% (47) of the 60 end with a four digit number below 2800. 40 of the 60 end with a four digit number below 2000.
The second quartet has one number that shows up over and over again: 3800 (with 19 examples, it's roughly one-third of our sample). A few each make up about 10% of our sample: 2100 (6), 3700 (5), 5300 (4), 5500 (7), 5600 (6), 5700 (8). Other groups show up much less frequently: 2300 (2), 2700 (1), 3000 (1).
The "3700" series begins with two digits ranging from '35' to '40' (3520 3700 0801, 4020 3700 3836).
The "3800" series begins with two digits ranging from '45' to '59' (e.g. 4520 3800 0914, 5920 3800 1905).
The "5300" series ranges from '06' to '08' (0620 5300 2101 , 0820 5300 1811).
The "5500" series ranges from '11' to '14' (1120 5500 0192, 1420 5500 2705).
The "5600" series ranges from '15' to '18' (1520 5600 4664, 1820 5600 0509).
The "5700" series ranges from '05'* to '23' to '30' in our sample (0520 5700 1404, 2320 5700 5134, 3020 5700 0873).
The "2100" series ranges from '01' to '02' (0120 2100 0256, 0220 2100 7942).
Both "2300" bodies start with '06'. Notice this is in the same range as the "5300" series.
The "2700" body starts with '37'. Notice this is in the same range as the "3700" series.
The "3000" body starts with '59'. Notice this is in the same range as the "3800" series.
It seems to me that the first two digits and the last four digits combined make up a unique six digit serial number, with the third through eighth digits indicating production runs and/or minor modifications as the model was revised over time.
*There are some exceptions to the sequence of the first two digits staying within a certain range for each "series", but the only one not noted above with the less used "series" numbers is 0520 5700 1404. That makes me question if I copied the number incorrectly when going through the photos at MPB? If I wrote "0" when I should have written "2", the pattern holds.
These kinds of patterns seem similar to the differences between many Canon bodies' external serial number and the value recorded in the 'maker notes' section of the EXIF info. The internal number is a combination of the first four characters of the hex resulting from the entire external serial number converted to hex, then the remaining hex characters converted back to decimal. [Example: My 50D's serial number is 1520708485. 1520708485 converted to hex is "5AA42B85". EXIF Info reports the number as 5AA411141. DPP shows it as 1520708485. Irfanview displays it as 1520708485 (5AA411141). Hmm... If one converts 11141 to hex, it's "2B85"! If one then converts hex "5AA42B85" to decimal it's the serial number stamped on the bottom of my camera, 1520708485.]
