Postwar Vintage vs Modern ?
When was the last time the dial changed? Will it change again.
I’ve heard some consider vintage pre-70s, pre-74 or like this message board it’s pre-80s. I’m just curious what people think. I grew up collecting in 1985 but to me it’s pre-81 but I could see it Shift to pre-85 just because I could see 1981 through 1984 Topps being vintage. What I can see is anything after 1985 being vintage at least right now. I do get stuck though with 1981 to present having numerous brands. Thoughts? |
The dial will change soon, seeing as players with 1989 rookies are being elected to the hall of fame. Adrian Beltre's retirement was the death knell for players playing in the 90s. So the dial should move to pre-1990. Albert Pujols debuted in 2001.
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The junk wax era may become the new "generally accepted" line of demarcation before too long.
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Some people have already moved it to 1989 Upper Deck as the start of "modern." However, I still think the overproduction and new techniques of Donruss and Fleer will forever exclude it from "vintage" despite the 30-year demarcation lines of classic cars and other collectibles. At least in my mind.
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The answer is there no set definition or universally accepted rule and never will be. Realize that someone who is 18, 25 or 30 will see past time differently than someone here who is 50 or 60. 1985 may seem like yesterday to some of us, but it's almost a generation before someone was born.
The simple way is to catalog by years: Pre-WWII, 1970-80s Topps, etc. |
Why can't we just leave the junk wax era in it's own separate category?
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Are they graded PSA 10??????
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Good point and I suppose that would be fine, just curious how people felt with cards like 83 Yaz and bench. To me there starting to feel like vintage.
Or like a 87 Ryan and Rose? Quote:
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Live and Let Live , I grew up in the 1960's buying baseball cards and started collecting and saving them in the mid 1970's Im 59 yrs old and still collecting but only pre war and post war my modern cut off is 1985
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I think it's fun listening to young kids these days talk about "vintage" being 1999-2000 Pokemon and 1993-94 Magic cards.
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I indeed was trying to joke around about the PSA 10 grade although I do find it absurd that 86 fleer hoops (same era essentially) in PSA 10 buys houses currently.
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There are a lot of pictures of the Federal money supply charts being shared by my Facebook friends which makes it look like there is a lot of money out there compared to 20 years ago.
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I gave up on fighting any of this the moment I first heard a Bon Jovi song from my childhood on the "classic" rock station about 5 years ago :(
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80
I have begrudgingly accepted vintage being pushed from 73 up to 80, but I really don't like it being push 81 and higher, going to hold the line there as long as I can...
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What's even crazier is it's far from just the best football/basketball/hockey "new vintage" cards of the '80s that have appreciated that way. Most other '80s PSA 9s and 10s of Gretzky, Lemieux, Jordan, Bird, Magic, etc have done just as well. Stuff totally in the background like an 84 OPC Gretzky or '88 Fleer Bird in those grades has gone up just as much. The fact that an '88 Fleer Magic Johnson PSA 9 costs $50 now (when you could barely give them away for $10 a year ago) might say even more about the $ coming into the hobby than the gains in the headline cards. |
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I also find it somewhat shocking that some of these Fleer 86 new money folk seem to have little/ no idea about the potential for highly graded but possibly trimmed 86 Fleers MJ's out there. The FLIP and $$$ is the drug not necessarily the card...
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With the exception of one set all my cards were issued between 1948 and 2020. I do not care where anyone draws a line between old and new. (The SCD Standard Catalog, when still being issued, quit listing new stuff after 1980)
All I know is I am getting old and have gone from mint to fair...but not yet encased, |
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My argument would be that the definition has more to do with what was going on in the card hobby at the time than just what was happening only on the ball field. By the calendar, all dates will be "vintage" at some point by a dictionary definition. But the card hobby changed dramatically in the 1980's vs. how it had worked for 30+ years before, one because of the loss of Topps' monopoly, and two due to the fact that the hobby exploded mainstream; card shops appeared on virtually every corner, and even people who didn't collect cards now knew they were at least supposed to be "worth something." I think the landscape of the hobby has to count for something. Junk wax then later in the 80's was another difference. Cards in the 1960's and earlier were perceived as scarce because nobody knew they were supposed to be worth anything, and threw them out. They were temporary ephemera. By the mid-80's, card manufacturers were overproducing everything one because it was selling, but two - it could be argued to counter what had happened earlier. Either way, history has shown us a dividing line between "junk" that hit it's apex in the early 90's and cards that came before it. The "junk" is not scarce by a longshot - even 30 years later. When I was growing up in the hobby (1986 - about '94), many dealers considered "vintage" pre-1974, because that was when Topps went from packs in series to one single series. Later in the 90's, the definition kind of pesudo shifted to 1980, since that was the last year of Topps monopoly dominance. Again, there is no one 100% correct definition. My point is that in 1976, many kids were still buying packs and flipping cards and carrying them around rubber-banded in their pockets. By 1986, many packs were being opened with the cards going straight into plastic, because by then everyone knew they were supposed to be worth something. That's a huge difference in hobby self-awareness. Today the more-or-less accepted definition of "vintage" on the internet and in trading groups seems to be 1980 and earlier. I would agree with that, and then keeping the "junk era" it's own separate thing, because the philosophy and facts about the cards of that era are just so unique. "Modern" to me refers to a time starting around the early 2000's or a bit before maybe, when card manufactures had realized their folly of the junk era, and had moved on to producing things like shiny numbered autos and parallels, making use of deliberate scarcity, and (also importantly) when they decided it was no big deal to totally price kids out of the hobby. |
I, for one, fully support the expansion of "vintage" to include junk wax - maybe the cards I have from my childhood collection will be worth something again! Let's make this happen, people!
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Maybe it's simpler just to refer to some things more generically as "old cards." That's what we called 1950's cards in the 1980's. The term "vintage" didn't really even come into play to my knowledge until I was an adult in the hobby. I thought it was silly at first myself. |
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The 1980 cutoff makes no sense to me outside of a calendar. I think there are 3 reasonable lines one could draw:
Pre-1974 - the end of Topps issues by series and the beginning of the 'modern' hobby starting to emerge where cards had some value outside of a few pre-war ones. Pre-1981 - the end of the Topps monopoly. Pre-1988/1989 - When mainstream generally-issued cards grew more advanced and objectively of higher quality (which doesn't mean overall better). 1989 Upper Deck is the famous peak of this shift, but 1988 Score was a big step up in quality over 87 Donruss/Fleer/Topps and does not get enough credit these days. |
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Great conversation
I’m kinda like the idea of pre-81 for me (yes a little shift from earlier statements). When I look at the Henderson, Ryan and others it feels vintage to me. |
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Postwar Vintage vs Modern ?
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It never gets old. That feeling is why many of us are here on N54 today, I think. Cheers! [emoji851] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
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I vote for a shift in card style which occurred "mostly" around the 89 ud as noted . I seem to recall that 89 ud was the first pack of cards I ever saw that cost $1. That felt like a threshold to me even back then. Also, it was close to the first set with multi colored photos on the back. Someone mentioned 88 score which I do believe had full colored photos on the back, and I did like those cards as well, but to me something about the 89ud combination of $1 per pack, multicolored photos, and the cardstock didn't feel like classic "baseball card" cardstock. It ushered in the 90's and "shiny stuff" A small handful of sets held onto the relatively drab back design in the early 90's, but I definitely feel like early 90's when multicolored backs and improved cardstock became the norm it truly ushered in "modern" and left "vintage" in the rearview. It's hard to believe that was 30 years ago |
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After posting I went back thru the thread a little more closely. This post is well thought out and makes sense. I just wish the term "junk wax" used a word other than "junk". Sure I don't mind calling a lot of those late 80's designs junk since IMO they are mostly fugly, but the 90's saw some of the best designs ever as far as I'm concerned..... dozens of sets that are far from junk in my eyes, but then again I'm mostly looking at them from a "do I like that card" perspective, not a "is that so over-produced that it's worthless" perspective. |
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What surprises me is that Fleer did not step up the quality of their base set until 1992 (Ultra in 1991), Donruss until 1992 (Leaf in 1991 I think was their first premium line), Topps until 1993 (first premium release was 91 Stadium Club, going off memory again). All 3 of the "veteran" mainstream makers completely ignored the superior quality of their upstart competitors that performed well until 1991, 3 full years before choosing to compete in the emerging "quality" market. Stadium Clubs are my personal favorite of the early "premium" sets. |
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1850's-1886 - The beginning of the hobby, CDV and then cabinet domination that would continue for some years after but whose domination was supplanted by small tobacco inserts. 1887-1907 - The origins of the modern conception of a set of cards, peak of 1888-1890 and the sustained minor issues that kept cards a thing but not common. 1908-1912 - The Tobacco and caramel peak of pre-war before regulation ended commonly available cards as a constant. 1913-1931 - The hobby goes back to something generally small and irregular, major reduction in objective quality of available cards. 1932-1941 - The resurgence of commonly available cards of quality and bubble gum cards. 1942-1947 - Might as well not exist, really. 1948-1956 - The evolution and competition of post-war, laying the landscape. 1957-1973 - The classic Topps series era of monopoly 1974-1980 - The inter period, a hobby footnote really. 1981-1987/1988 - The era of competition and new ideas beginning that would lead to radical changes. 1988/1989-1998 - The upgrade in quality of cards and the beginning of chase cards that would end the hobby of children. 1999-present- The end of cards being for kids at all, the advent of relics and autographs being inserted at rates that made pulling one realistic and leading to the dominance of relatively wealthy adults and investors over 95% of the hobby |
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I thought it was funny. |
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