Originally Posted by
T-Mar
It's a 1989 model, contract manufactured in January of that year, by Merida of Taiwan. The Raleigh serial number charts only cover internal manufacture by Raleigh facilities, not contract manufacturing. That would get very complicated very quickly.
Just to explain this a little further for those that want to know ............ maybe it is obvious. The first two characters "M9" are what count, M = Merida, 9 = year (1989).