When Does Modern Turn Vintage?

[Megotastrophe]

So I was posting about some toy cars and I finally decided to put them in Modern Toys. About 2006 issue date. I was a little torn because obviously 2006 is modern. But it’s 18 years ago. When the Museum first started about the year 2000, the newest Mego figures were about 18 years old. So 18 used to be vintage here but is it still? That does mean the earliest CTvT figures are vintage in their own right. It’s a rabbit hole

[TRAVELING MEGO HULK]

Traditionally the rule of thumb was: 20 -99 years old is vintage, 100 and above is antique.

[Megotastrophe]

I thought antique was 75 for most items and cars at 25. I remember the cars at 25 from Christine since it was a 58 Fury and the book was in 1983. It had just hit antique car status.

[Jorge Galvan]

Traditionally the rule of thumb was: 20 -99 years old is vintage, 100 and above is antique.

Yep, my sister in law is a Antique dealer and she says'

Vintage is 20 years or older. Modern/Contemporary are UNDER 20 years and Antique is 100 years or older. When I asked about "Prehistoric" she laffed! Antique usually covers everything else!!

[TRAVELING MEGO HULK]

I provided the long established answer to the question you posed. As with a lot of things, folks tend to be loose in their descriptions/definitions. A particular car club seeking wider membership may decide that their parameters of 25 years equals antique, but before they did so; it was not so. Many car collectors and even "experts" refer to a 55' T-Bird or a 63' Stingray as "classics", but classic cars are a specific designation for a limited number of pre-war models that have been deemed to be "Classic". That's just a couple of examples, there are multitudes. Folks can call their year old socks antique if they wanna, there's nothing carved in stone by the fiery finger of the almighty referencing this rule - but if you are seeking to be specific, then the answer which I provided is accurate & you're free to research veracity if you doubt it.

[Megotastrophe]

Apologies if it sounded like I was saying you were wrong. Not all. Just throwing my thoughts back into the ring. Mostly the whole post was about how a lot of toys I have trouble calling old are as old as the toys that was calling old when I first started collecting

[TRAVELING MEGO HULK]

Actually, my apologies to you - that read back way more snarky/pedantic than tongue in cheek as intended ( even including the fiery finger/ antique sock shtick).

I agree with the difficulty of conceptualizing the shift into vintage-ville with what feels like last Tuesday's toys, but it's simply part of getting older. Kids born in 2000 are just beginning to look back wistfully on the stuff they had when they were 10 years old.

[MRP]

I have this issue with comics as well. I started reading comics in 1973. FF #1 was only 12 years old at that point. But currently DC's New 53 started 13 years ago, i.e. longer than the span between when I started and when FF #1 came out, but I have a hard time conceiving the new52 as old comics. But as we get older our perspective of time changes. To a 16 year old, 4 years is 1/4 of their life, but to a 40 year old it is only 1/10 and for an 80 year old 1/20. So that 16 year old sees high school as being so long and taking forever, but to that 40 year old, 4 years seems to go by in a blink of an eye.

And many of us have trouble changing our perspective of what is old behind us as we age. When we were younger, old was stuff from before we were born and the number of years behind us didn't matter as much as that. But now there are a whole lot of folks born after us and events in our lifetime were before they were born and old, but our perspective is different, and its difficult switching form the biased view of our own perspective of things in relation to our birth to an unbiased one of how many years from it to the present when determining if something is old, vintage, antique, etc. Especially since so much of collecting is tied up in nostalgia and memories of our childhood, it's hard to think of things form after our childhood as being older or vintage, but they are, even if we are in denial of it.

-M

[Megotastrophe]

My Age of Comic Book Movies

[B-Lister]

Vintage - 20 years or older
Antique - 50-100 years or older
Relic - 100+ years

[jwyblejr]

Try telling any of this to a Star Wars collector.