By: Jefferson Cruz
You probably notice a lot of different terms defining “old” while you're out foraging for bargains and shopping online. Is the item you're considering really "antique," or a "vintage,"? The answer, of course, depends on what you are buying. Delving further into what these terms actually mean can help you buy and sell old items.
ANTIQUE
Buyers in the know understand that an antique is something quite specific, and not just "anything old." A seller who calls something made in the 1950s an antique, for example, is just plain wrong. A seller who uses the term antique when an item is much too new for that designation should raise questions in your mind. Is the seller misrepresenting his wares? Or is he just ignorant about what he's selling?
A true antique, as defined by the United States Customs Service and most professionals in the antique field, is an object that is 100 years of age or older. That bare-bones definition keeps things pretty simple to grasp most of the time. The scale slides each year, of course, as more and more things fall into the antique range.
VINTAGE
For many decades, the term “collectible” represented anything that was not old enough to fall under the antique umbrella. The use of the word "vintage" in the 1980s and ‘90s was largely associated with specific collecting genres—such as the aforementioned clothing, costume jewelry, and postcards—that were not old enough to be called antiques.
These days the term "vintage" covers older items in more of a blanket way, as in going shopping for vintage clothes with your friends. You can look at it as the up-to-date version of “going antiquing.” It is understood that this means shopping for older items that have distinctively vintage styles, whether those things date to the 1940s or to the 1970s.
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