What constitutes vintage?

[Senator Jack]

Perhaps it is because we live in an accelerated world, where people tend to be nostalgic for the life of three weeks ago, ('Remember January? Oh, the clothes were so much cooler back then.') but as of late I'm finding Ebay sellers are listing practically everything as vintage.

I know I've written about this before but to illustrate my point I need to reiterate. When I was buying 60s suits in the early 80s, I don't remember anyone calling them vintage. They were just old clothes, and with the era only having passed some 15 years before, they were old clothes. But now sellers are listing 80s clothes - even 90s clothes - as vintage.

So what I'm asking is 'what does everyone think should define vintage?' I've written to Ebay suggesting they rule that an item can't be listed as vintage unless it's 25 years old. I know that every seller is not an expert at dating items, but perhaps this rule will force the the weekend tag-salers who list everything as vintage to do a little research before the sale.

Opinions please. Am I being too harsh?

Kind regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Hemingway Jones]

I think you have a point. Beside the vintage tag being misleading, it is also making me feel old! Vintage 1980 tie; what is that?

I think clothes become "vintage" fast because most of them are so disposable. If you think about it, it's amazing that a tie or a pair of shoes survived 75 years. Who keeps things through three generations? Beside all of us!

Also, with the passing of the millenium, everything before it now seems old, and "vintage."

In wine, it would only be "vintage" if it came from a very good year.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

What is vintage ...

... and what is not? That's a hard one. Possibly we should say that i's not vintage unless the majority of the generation who wore the clothes first time around are retired or close to retiring (someone, for example, who was 20 on January 1st 1960 - and likely to have been wearing suits, i guess - is now 66, and retired or close to retiring). So my cut-off would probably be around 1960. I would happily throw the date back to 1950 because i'm not a fan of the 50s styles, but i'm trying to be a little less biased than normal.

Or should the word 'vintage' have a rarity connotation?

Another - when do clothes become antique? I though that was 100 years.

bk

p.s. what we really need is for ebay to crack down on the sellers with tons of brand new hats or those repro rockabilly two tone shirts listing them in the 40s categories.

 

[Twitch]

Geez Jack I wrote that exact same thing a little while back. It's perplexing to say the least when a mid 1990s article is considered "vintage."

The special interest auto people are getting as bad depending on the organization. Antique Auto Club of America considers a rolling 25 year rule so that mass-produced trash 1981 Chrysler K car of Ford Granada are now "classics!" Zowie! Other organizations have more rigid definitions that make sense.

This is like saying since something, anything that has existed 25 years is automatically "vintage," whatever that means. It's different to different people. Someone 31 thinks something 25 years old is pretty old or vintage. Someone 67 doesn't. A 1981 Ebay trench coat is not vintage in the sense we define things. It could be retro in styling and that's OK too as long as it is so stated. They could simply say "1980s vintage coat." At least prospective buyers would have a better idea than simply a vague "vintage" in the description.:fedora:

 

[J. M. Stovall]

As a practical matter, limiting the use of the word "vintage" on Ebay could greatly reduce the number of hits in a search. If you key in "Vintage Suit" you get more than 3800 entries! Probably 250 of those are what we would consider an actual vintage suit (some people are even selling track suits as vintage!)

 

[Marc Chevalier]

"Vintage" is a very appropriate term for wine. It's a useless term for anything else.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

A better term might be "past era clothing", or simply "era clothing."

 

[shamus]

"Vintage" is like "Like New"

it's anything you want it to be, especially when it comes to people selling something.

If you really want to get percise, then say 1920's, 1930's, 1940's and so on.

In the scheme of things modern suits and hats really are not that old. Not like coins or ancient tools.

So use "Vintage" to describe your 1925 bowler or your 1979 Nike track suit. To the person who's looking, the item will be just want they want because to them, it's vintage.

 

[Senator Jack]

Posted by Twitch

Antique Auto Club of America considers a rolling 25 year rule so that mass-produced trash 1981 Chrysler K car of Ford Granada are now "classics!" Zowie!

Every Labor Day weekend we have the Lead East 50s Weekend in NJ. There are constant battles as what constitutes vintage. Despite what the state laws and insurance companies consider vintage (25 years old) the show does not allow cars produced past '74. Really, it would be ridiculous to have Chevy Chevettes next to Corvettes, wouldn't it? Certainly they have the right idea.

I think the real problem is the sudden 'value' of the word vintage, and while ten years ago people would have been throwing out thos 'old clothes', they're now trying to make a buck on them.

Yeah, it's subjective, but I'm going to try to get ebay to consider making it objective. I still haven't heard from them.

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Braxton36]

Semantics

I can perhaps speak to this from the perspective of the antiques business.

In the US antiques trade the word "antique" now means something over 100 years old. Obviously this is a moving target as the years roll on. In other countries there are date-certain dileniations that often involve things made prior to the machine age. US Customs uses the prior-to-1891 date of the McKinley Tarriff. Clearly this can get confusing.

The term "vintage" is no less confusing. The way we handle it is that we term something "vintage" if it meets three criteria: 1) it is not antique 2) it shows some evidence of wear and 3) it is of outmoded fashion. Although we generally deal in antiques, we often acquire "vintage" items in purchasing a large group of items. Granted it is a catch-all phrase that defies exact definition but it would be dishonest to call the items truly "antique" just as it would be wrong to classify them as "new."

To further muddy the water, there is the term "collectibles" which generally should denote items that are of current interest to consumers, generally desired for part of a larger collection, and generally not antique. They can be either new or vintage.

I don't know how this applies to wearing apparel but a safe bet would be to say that items from 1980 forward are not really "vintage." For the decade of the 1970's the word "ugly" comes to mind. I would say that items from the 1960's and beyond could appropriately be classified as "vintage." Yikes, that includes me.

This is just how my family does business so these are purely my opinions. But, we've found that customers repeat because we try to be as truthful as we can be. I share your frustration with e-bay. There's plenty of ignorance out there.

 

[DronesDodz]

I hear you,
just had an interesting discussion with a friend in SC a couple days ago. I told him about my new discovered passion for the retro scene, music, fashion etc and all this sudden he is like "I love retro dude...ABBA, Disco..."
Holy crap....:cool2:...sorry but I had to educate him.
And yes, I have seen a lot of these "so-called" retro/vintage items on ebay too. Very sad what some people call vintage. Maybe I should sell my "vintage" Nirvana records on ebay

Cheers,
Christoph

 

[chilidawgguy]

I think the obvious may have been overlooked here. Maybe ebay should be encouraged to setup classifications and define them...antique, vintage, retro, recent past and new.

 

[John in Covina]

Vintage / dating and circa

Vintage when you speak of wine is to let you know the majority of the grapes or all where from X year so every year is a vintage. When you speak of port not every year is declared a vintage. Each Port 'House' reviews the quality of their port an declares a vintage when the quality is of a certain standard, only then will they declare that year Vintage.

In clothing, the explanation maybe a bit nebulous, with a little luck a seller can be absolute in their declaration of the year of manufacture. With hats such as Fedoras or anything that remotely resembles one, more often than not the seller has no clue, they can't even come up with the decade it was made. Information gets lost quickly with clothing and apparel.

Advertising on ebay relies on the seller and when the seller is lacking in knowledge it is remarkable what they are willing to "suppose" about their item when they attempt research. Sometimes their research is looking up similar items on ebay. If what they are basing their info on is skued, it can be 3rd of 4th generation skued. Embelishments and outright lies abound.

So now, if they don't know what they are talking about, how can they stick to any standards. That's where the experts come in and clubs, to try to establish standards and definitions that most can agree on.

If you have ever looked at coin collecting it came down to having 2 companies that grade the coins and seal them into cases, issuing a item number and establishing the coin's grade. Even then, there are people that feel the earlier grading was more "stringent" and that has lead to Case Cracking. Where if you pop an important coin out of a case and send it in and it is upgraded, the difference is some instances can mean hundreds or thousands of dollars. And this is where the grading system has been defined as completely and succinctly as possible. Plus there are tricks for silver coins that can bring upgrading.

It is very tough to bring these things about, even the language seems to betray us.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

I am not sure you could ever get a specific date on when the cutoff is for vintage. Personally, I think at the moment clothing needs to be 1960s or earlier to really be vintage.

Pre-war/post-war is a good distinction for many things (like houses/buildings) but not exactly a great one for clothes. I may be better than none however.

 

[Benny Holiday]

My pet peeve . . .

...
what we really need is for ebay to crack down on the sellers with tons of brand new hats or those repro rockabilly two tone shirts listing them in the 40s categories.

is when sellers describe their items, say, a 40's tie, as "40's Rockabilly Swing Tie". It's just a personal thing, it really bugs me. If it's indicative of Rockabilly fashion, which Elvis and his cohorts spawned from the mid-50's onwards, then it's sure not 40's. If it's a wide 40's tie, well that's got nothing to do with Rockabilly.

Same deal with those repro shirts. List 'em in the repro section where they belong.

 

[MrBern]

I dug deep into a closet for an old polo shirt w/ my company's logo.
Atthe office, one of the interns noticed it & asked if it was VINTAGE.
And that made me laugh.
But then I thought, gee I probably got this shirt in the late `80s. And the intern was born in the early `80s. So to her, it was vintage. To me, it was just one of my old shirts.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Maybe it's a question of special relativity?

The "vintage" quality of an article depends directly upon the age, and hence the viewpoint of the observer. Vintage to a person born in the 70's could then be anything from the era of the 70's.
As to my own viewpoint, I think vintage comprises the things from everyday life of my parent's generation. Things that my parents owned that were only 20 years old or so maybe back then.