Determining what is vintage

[nolemmings]

Originally Posted by rats60

I have never considered late 70s as vintage. My cut off would be 1973, the last set with high numbers, 1974 cards being issued as a single series. 80s cards are not and will never be vintage in my mind.

I would agree, although I would use 1972, as this was the last set with true high numbers, the 1973's being printed as a single series also, and issued that way in parts of the country.

[Chuck9788]

I've always felt that the Topps 1985 set is final "vintage" year.

The 1985 set included the last player/manager card (Pete Rose), a farewell to Yogi Berra and great HOF veterans (Ryan, Carlton, Fingers, Reggie Jackson). Gary Carter as an Expo, I could go on forever. Anyway, it was the final set that had the "vintage feel". It also passed the torch to the next talented/bad behavior generation (Gooden, McGwire, Clemens, etc..).

Anything after 1989 can not be accepted as vintage anytime soon.

[mrmopar]

When I was a kid and was buying "old" cards, they were from the 50s and 60s. It was rare that I would stumble upon a T card or a Goudey era card, but I had a couple. It is funny to think that I thought those 1950s Topps cards seemed so old at the time when in fact they were no more than 25 years old. At 10 years of age though, 25 years is a very long time.

If I were that same kid now, using the same standard, I might be buying 1993 Topps cards, amazed at how old they are.

Unless the hobby changes significantly with regard to how cards are made it will probably always be hard for anyone who bought cards older than about 1993 to consider UV coated cards to ever be "vintage".

And final food for thought, those fairly commonly seen T-206 cards are well over a Century old now.

[Volod]

Seems like just a semantic quibble to me. Vintage is a subjective measure, as it is with wines, so it doesn't necessarily refer to value, just age. Sort of like a number of vintage card collectors.

[Jwkeen]

Vintage by definition means classic, important, quality and of enduring interest. I guess you have to determine what that means to you.

[Jwkeen]

Originally Posted by Chuck9788

I've always felt that the Topps 1985 set is final "vintage" year.

The 1985 set included the last player/manager card (Pete Rose), a farewell to Yogi Berra and great HOF veterans (Ryan, Carlton, Fingers, Reggie Jackson). Gary Carter as an Expo, I could go on forever. Anyway, it was the final set that had the "vintage feel". It also passed the torch to the next talented/bad behavior generation (Gooden, McGwire, Clemens, etc..).

Anything after 1989 can not be accepted as vintage anytime soon.

I believe Pete Rose actually had a separate player and manager card in the 86 and 87 sets as well.

[bauce]

For me, anything made after the Topps monopoly has ended will be the end of the Vintage Era and the beginning of the Era Of Gluttony.

[jchcollins]

I would agree with others who have said it largely depends on your age, when you started collecting, and what other associations or memories you have with the hobby. I started collecting out of packs at age 9 in 1986. Within a year or so I had discovered the world of "old" cards through shops, shows, and antique malls (we didn't use the word "vintage" back then...) and I remember considering 1970's cards fairly new because they weren't much older than I was. I thought of 1950's cards (especially issues like '55 Bowman, '55 Topps, '56 Topps) as "old" because of the coloring and size and how cool they were. But a 1973 Topps card? Probably not so much.

These days my children play sometimes with a bunch of my old leftover '86 Topps commons, and I don't know if they have any clue how old those cards are. They do know they aren't particularly valuable, LOL.

[JollyElm]

It's funny, I think the term 'vintage' is a moving target for most of us. When I was little in the summer of '73, my brother came home from his friend's house and showed us all of these crazy old cards he got. In hindsight they were 1966 Topps, as I always remember one of them was Tom Tresh, whose name I giggled at. In other words, these ancient relics of the past were only 7 years old!! We considered them sooooooooooooo frickin' old.

For me, I guess I go with around 1973-1975 and older as being vintage. It just saddens me that cards from the 80's are considered vintage in some circles. Yowza.

[toledo_mudhen]

I would suggest that in 2090 - the mass produced stuff from 1990 will still be sitting around in warehouses and will still not be considered "vintage" by most collectors (if we still have any collectors by then).

For me "vintage" runs from 1945 thru 1980 (I just really like the 1980 Topps set). Prior to 1945 is in a category all it's own -"PreWar"

Prewar takes a special kind of collector - typically with higher budgets than most of us (in order to complete sets anyway)