What makes baseball cards and photos vintage?

[Directly]

One evening I received a phone call asking if I bought baseball cards.. I asked the caller if they were older cards...his reply he really wasn't sure but they were small, bingo I said to myself--My reply yes I was definitely interested in seeing them.----they all ended up being 1909 vintage cards,

[FrankWakefield]

All of those responses are correct, and give you an idea of how nebulous 'vintage' might be. For me, I think of Pre-Topps. 48 Bowmans and Tip Top Bread are near the newest of the vintage. 1951 Bowmans are there, at the edge.

I once read something about an American from the south, he goes to college here, maybe graduates in the 50's. Later in life he was the editor of a national magazine, here. He got a Rhodes scholarship, and goes to England to study. I think he's at Oxford. He's trying to research something that happened close in time to World War I, he's in the History Department, and he can't find anything close to his search. He asks for help, and he is politely told that this is the History Department, anything that recent would be found in the Journalism Department.

The point is that 'vintage' is a subjective target. Golly, when I was a kid the oldest card I saw was a 1959 Topps, hadn't heard of Goudey, Cracker Jack, or tobacco cards. The kid who had them wouldn't trade them away. This would have been in 1964 or 1965. I recall we wanted new cards, and there's no way that in 1966 we'd have traded 5 1966 Topps for 5 1962 Topps... it might take 15 or 20 1962 cards to get 5 new cards. As kids we were idiots. And as an old guy I think I'm still a bit of an idiot.

OK. I think that Rhodes Scholar from above is the guy who wrote My Dog Skip, a good book for a baseball fan to read, it was made into a movie. If I'm thinking write (pun intended), his name was Willie Morris. Another book of his... Always Stand In Against The Curve.

[Vintagedeputy]

As I grew up in collecting since a child (age 52 now), vintage has always been 1980 and older.

[egri]

I've always thought of vintage as pre-1980.

[G1911]

On the card side, I think it's a generally agreed upon consensus that vintage covers from the CDV era through the Topps monopoly, pre 1981. This covers several distinct periods of card distribution, but I think it makes sense as the logical cutoff if we divide card history into only 2 pieces. The end of the Topps monopoly coincides with the period where cards started to be less of a toy and more of an intended collectible, which is the single biggest shift in its history.

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

I once read something about an American from the south, he goes to college here, maybe graduates in the 50's. Later in life he was the editor of a national magazine, here. He got a Rhodes scholarship, and goes to England to study. I think he's at Oxford. He's trying to research something that happened close in time to World War I, he's in the History Department, and he can't find anything close to his search. He asks for help, and he is politely told that this is the History Department, anything that recent would be found in the Journalism Department.

I know what you mean about England. We are such a new country in comparison. I went various thrift shops there and they had items to sell that were 500 years old! I was thinking these items should be in a museum. They were no big deal to them.

[ALR-bishop]

Originally Posted by Directly

One evening I received a phone call asking if I bought baseball cards.. I asked the caller if they were older cards...his reply he really wasn't sure but they were small, bingo I said to myself--My reply yes I was definitely interested in seeing them.----they all ended up being 1909 vintage cards,

With my luck, this is what they guy would have had

[JollyElm]

With the way COVID has stopped time from progressing, 2019 feels like it was 50 years ago. Vintage for me is now pre-2019.