Vintage is about age of course, but that cutoff varies widely depending on context. Stamps, pottery, firearms, coins, cards, any area will have a different year or era as the cutoff.
I think vintage implies, beyond “old stuff”, that the item under discussion in this period was markedly different, that it’s age is a defining virtue of the item and not an incidental of time simply passing.
I tend to favor the 1980 cutoff, it’s not perfect but it’s the approximate end of an era. Many eras are covered by vintage, and multiple by not-vintage or modern or whatever we term it. However, if we divide card history into only two chunks, I think the early-mid 1980’s is the most reasonable cutoff. Before this time cards were advertising freebies or very cheap and designed for kids. By the mid 1980’s, cards were the domain largely of older people, not kids, and collecting cards was largely about money. Whether it’s Mattingly in 1984 or Jeffries in 1988 or Franco in 2021, the modern hobby is hit-centric, and largely financial. Collecting vintage is too now, but the cards in their own time were mostly all worthless and not designed for this investment, or even for adults. While the modern hobby has seen plenty of innovation and change its basic structure is largely the same as it was in the mid 1980’s, while before this period it was markedly different. I think the end of the Topps monopoly and this titanic shift in what baseball cards are for and seen as is the most reasonable cutoff. I don’t see the definition of vintage changing until another titanic shift.
|