Looking at
QWERTERs Clinic, I think, like ripster, that the light brown one is a newer revision (assuming he pulled the stems from the older Cherry 'boards at the top of the page; at the very least, this page has been up for some time and these are certainly older stems). The one's on QWERTER's Clinic look like the darker one. That said, one might also deduct the following:
- There are multiple molds for the same color switch. It has nothing to do with age, per se, but where/what mold the part was made in.
- Cherry, in fact, does make some switches from a certain factory/mold that it uses internally, and another factory/mold that uses to make switches to sell to third parties.
- There is one part (which would have to include the switch case) that might be better for PCB mounting and one for plate mounting, even though they are interchagable (this is probably not the case but just some conspiracy-theory BS I came up with)
In either case, I don't think any spec differences were necessarily intentional, even though there are some notable differences in design. While not necessarily verifiable, it does make the sales persons explaination given to XsPhat some time ago seem at least somewhat reasonable.
