[jeffschevelle]

As Bill noted, that is the 67-only version. The stripe was moved as shown on the second tire in Bill's pic some time in latter 67 production, and definitely before July of 1967. Then that version was used on 68's as well. Then a completely new sidewall (with the writing on the outer portion of the sidewall and stripe close to the wheel) came along for 69 and is what has been repopped.

And that is not a 1968 (or 1978 or 1988) date code. The standardized dating did not come along until well after this tire was made. The Firestone codes from this vintage are undecipherable and as far as I know no one has the info to decode them. Several years ago I engaged in lengthy discussions with Firestone over several weeks to see if they still had that data and could track it down, and it was a dead end.

By contrast, even though Goodyear also had a cryptic system back at that time, the key to decode it is known and it is very easy to determine the mfr. date of a pre-DOT Goodyear tire.