What is Vintage?

[schwood]

So, what does everyone consider vintage these days? I am in the process of collating all my Red Sox cards, and wanted to separate out the 'vintage' and put them together by year.

I am thinking anything 20 years old I will separate out. So, anything pre-1990 cards. Which seems kind of funny to me since that includes those 1987-1990 topps sets which were way overproduced. But not lots of inserts in those years, so it would be easier to just keep them together and then do the stuff newer than that organized by player.

What do others think?

[OriolesFan]

I don't know if there is a set limit for 'vintage". However, like with cars, I personally consider "vintage" to be those that are 25 years old or older. So, as of now, that would be 1986 and back.

[schwood]

Thanks Rodney. Makes complete sense to me.

I might not call it vintage, and just pull out the 'old cardboard' type cards and put those together and then start with the newer glossy ones as 'new cardboard' and do it that way.

[key2win]

I know most people say its anything more than 20-25 years old. For baseball, I would guess anything before 1980 would be considered Vintage since a lot of the cards from the 80s/early 90s were overly mass produced.

[schwood]

Completely agree with that Kerwin.

I am likely going to go with the 'old' and 'new' cardboard for my collation. It seems the older cardboard (the brown stuff) covers the years up to where they really started to put in inserts and such. Sometime around 1992 I think it was. When the cards all started to be white and glossy. So, I will likely just pull out anything before 1990 and put it together as teams sets, and then anything after I will sort by player. I need to do something as I have so much stuff it is going to be almost impossible to sort it any really unconfusing way!

[Ryan Cracknell]

Different people are going to have different definitions for "vintage." I wonder if age has something to do with it. I don't consider anything after to be vintage but I could see some who's younger than me think that 1985 Topps. Likewise, someone older than me might have amassed a large collection before I was born so they might look at stuff from before 1975 as vintage.

I'd stick with 1980 as the benchmark. Most stuff after that is so readily available.

[ucffans]

I use 1985 as my definition. This is b/c of the mass overproduction of 87-90 stuff.

[sanjosefuji]

Great question... For me, vintage is anything from the 70's and earlier. When I see the word vintage, I think "old"... so it depends on the person's perspective. I grew up collecting stuff from the 80's, so it doesn't seem old to me... but I always wanted "older" cards from the 50's, 60's, and 70's.

[sickmantz]

When I think of vintage cards, I think nostalgia - of that certain card stock and production. Anything up to and through 1987 pretty much exemplifies that for me, that grainy card stock and the somewhat limited productions. It seems like once we hit the late 80s to early 90s, card stocks improved but card productions went through the roof. There's just something about cards from the before 1988 that really intrigues me. They're really cool to own.

Of course, if I had the money, I'd be collecting everything from as early as cards were produced, but for the nostalgia, 1987 and earlier is where vintage starts for me.

I'm sure a lot of people don't think the 80s is vintage, but the 80's started over 30 years ago now. Vintage can't be a fixed point in time, can it? It has to shift eventually.

[ETsportscards]

I agree with the notion of vintage being anything before the overproduction era.