[BobC]

I personally think of vintage as 1980 and earlier also.

First, because as you said, 1981 was the first year after the courts ruled Topps could no longer monopolize the baseball card market, so Fleer and Donruss also entered the fray. And 1981 was also then technically the start of the junk wax era, at least IMO, so definitely not vintage to me.

Secondly, and also partially in tribute to Bob Lemke, the old Krause/SCD catalogs always cut-off the vintage and modern sections of their earlier catalogs at 1980 as the last year for vintage as well. And then SCD/Krause continued using that 1980 vintage cutoff year for later, more recent additions of their catalogs, which they just issued separately for vintage cards alone. I've always felt those SCD/Krause catalogs were (and to me really still are) the most comprehensive, overall single source of vintage card information out there and available. So if 1980 was good enough for them, its good enough for me.

Obviously, many younger collectors may disagree because the 80's are before their time, and likely don't even know about the SCD/Krause catalogs.