What makes baseball cards and photos vintage?

[cubman1941]

The first part of this is ever so true - I worked in an antique shop for many years beginning in 1998 and constantly would have people come in and ask me if I bought "old" baseball cards. I always told them I would look at them. In every case they would be 1988 Donruss or newer. To them these were "old" cards. Some of the people were just not knowledgeable and some thought the cards were really old. I always politely told them I wasn't interested and suggested a place in town who advertised they bought all sports cards.

Originally Posted by BobC

Think it can vary by person. You ask a 65 year old what is vintage, it's one thing. Ask a 25- 30 year old, they'll say something entirely different, like maybe anything before they were born.

For me, I guess I'm more influenced by the old SCD catalogs, and consider vintage as pre-1981, when Donruss and Fleer started offering baseball cards alongside Topps and brought on what is known as the modern junk card era. That is the same break point Krause/SCD used in deciding what they considered as modern and vintage when producing their catalogs.

I don't think anyone would argue that pre-war (WWII) is most definitely vintage. At least no one is using the term "antique", well, at least not among people in the hobby itself. Had always thought of the cutoff for an antique as being at least 100 years old, an age which a large part of what many of us collect has now crossed..