Another lame thread defining “vintage”

[BobC]

Originally Posted by 4reals

So, this is the point I was attempting to make… Should the value of cards during an era define whether it’s vintage or not? Shouldn’t it be less about value and more about age? I get that older collectors will have more trouble accepting 80s cards as vintage but I don’t feel necessarily that this needs to be an opinion thing that is defined differently by everyone, that’s disorganized and chaotic thinking. Isn’t it logical that the 25 year rule is in play for an item to be classified as vintage and then within that classification there are vintage sub-groups (eras) like pre-war, golden age, and junk wax? To further this idea, another era frequently discussed with modern collectors is the slab era which ushered in the junk slab era which led to the recent backlog problems with psa and bgs. Eventually, slabs 25 years or older may be considered vintage slabs.


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I agree with your thinking. There should be subgroups to vintage, and modern eras. To me, 1980/81 is the cutoff to one of them. I could easily see there being a breakdown of eras, as follows:

Vintage Nineteenth Century Era (I think most would concur you can lump this together as one era)

Vintage Pre-War Era (From 1900 - 1941/42)
(This can be further broken into sub-genres)

Vintage Pre-War Dead-Ball Era (1900 -1920)
Vintage Pre-War Live-Ball Era (1921 - 1941/42)

Vintage Post-War (1942 - 1980)
(This can be further broken into sub-genres)

Vintage Post-War (1942 - 1960)
Vintage Post-War Expansion Era (1961 - 1980)

Vintage Junk-Wax Era (1981 - 1999)

Modern Era (2020 - Present)

To me, these work out to be some very logical groupings and breakdowns, which just so happen to work out to about 20 years each, save for the 19th century era, which deserves its own grouping.