Comment by somat
Is the serial number even in base 10? the other parts of the number allow letters, the article does not say, but it could easily be base 36. which is close to 3 trillion serials.
Plus a bonus rant: this is one of those things that looks like a number and as such you are tempted to use a number to store it, but its not, it's a string, you will never do math on it so it is not a number. see also: phone numbers, social security numbers, serial numbers.
and sheepish bonus update: there is a checksum, so math is done on it. wonder if the checksum makes more or less sense in base 36? probably less, the checksum almost looks base12-ish, the mod(11), but there are special cases for two digit values so it is probably base 10.
Eh, your comment here was checksummed several times as well crossing the network. Doesn't make it "a number".