Cool! I have two like this but I think the date code is "9F" which would mean June 1999...Yours sounds like June 1997...just two months older than my F20T12/WW.
i bought one of these brand new back in '96, one of the very first ones. it was made at the fairmont, wv plant with the small etch and bold philips logo. the one above came from salina, ks.
I personally like the unbolded logo above better. Seems like they used both bold and narrow like they did with some tubes having the shield logo and others not?
yes the narrow font went first but i meant they went back and fourth with both bold and non-bold then some years later the same thing happened with shield and no shield. i guess it was just history repeating itself eh?