While some records such as Christophe Plantin's exist of what exact types were cut by Garamond himself, many details of his career remain uncertain: early estimates placed Garamond's date of birth around 1480, but modern opinion proposes much later estimates. A document called the Le Bé Memorandum (based on the memories of Guillaume Le Bé, but collated by one of his sons around 1643) suggests that Garamond finished his apprenticeship around 1510. This is considered unlikely by modern historians since his mother was still alive when he died in 1561 and little is known of him before around 1540.