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What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-

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What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-
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What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-

Original Post
carpentercrazy (92 ) View Listings
carpentercrazy
(1 of 30)
What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-
Sep 26, 2007 09:51 AM
I enjoy shopping for vintage items on Ebay, but have found that alot of items listed as vintage appear to be new or nearly new. I feel that the description (vintage) is often misleading and/or inaccurate. Recently in our local newspaper, an antique expert answered this question by a reader: "What does the word "vintage" mean when it's used by a dealer to describe items? I find many items are fairly new."
Answer: "There's no rule about the meaning of vintage. Many dealers and collectors customarily use "antique" to describe something 100 years old or more. "Collectables are about 25 to 100 years old. "Vintage" is a catchall word that means "not brand-new." Sellers often describe an item as vintage if they don't know how old the item is, but figure it was made at least a decade ago."

I personally would like to see Ebay change the meaning of vintage and give it 2 catagories: 1.Vintage 2.Vintage-look

Is anyone else with me on this or have an opinion?
Thank you.
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What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-

(29 Replies / 1,055 Views)
carpentercrazy (92 ) View Listings
carpentercrazy
What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-
Sep 26, 2007 09:51 AM
I enjoy shopping for vintage items on Ebay, but have found that alot of items listed as vintage appear to be new or nearly new. I feel that the description (vintage) is often misleading and/or inaccurate. Recently in our local newspaper, an antique expert answered this question by a reader: "What does the word "vintage" mean when it's used by a dealer to describe items? I find many items are fairly new."
Answer: "There's no rule about the meaning of vintage. Many dealers and collectors customarily use "antique" to describe something 100 years old or more. "Collectables are about 25 to 100 years old. "Vintage" is a catchall word that means "not brand-new." Sellers often describe an item as vintage if they don't know how old the item is, but figure it was made at least a decade ago."

I personally would like to see Ebay change the meaning of vintage and give it 2 catagories: 1.Vintage 2.Vintage-look

Is anyone else with me on this or have an opinion?
Thank you.
Page: 2 of 2
 
Last Post
Oct 19, 2007 09:29 AM
by carpentercrazy (92 ) View Listings
silverthwait (195 ) View Listings
silverthwait
(24 of 29)
What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-
Oct 13, 2007 12:29 PM
HOWEVER, IT'S NOT THAT DURN COMPLICATED! Anybody who isn't a scammer can figure it out. Really!


She says crossly, who has been looking for a particular kind of clock...
carpentercrazy (92 ) View Listings
carpentercrazy
(25 of 29)
What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-
Oct 13, 2007 01:13 PM
To vedave: This is the sentence I'm referring to...
"I personally would like to see Ebay change the meaning of vintage and give it 2 catagories: 1.Vintage 2.Vintage-look".
OR, Ebay can make it conditional that a year MUST go with the listing. If one doesn't know the year, then they could put what they believe the year to be and maybe put (?) next to it. Hey give me a break. This is NOT my full-time job! :)
Thank you silverthwaite for your feedback. Soooooo, is anyone going to contact Ebay?
vedave (1847 ) View Listings
vedave
(26 of 29)
What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-
Oct 13, 2007 02:15 PM
Thanks for the response. Unfortunately in these vintage discussions everybody is hung up on the 1st definitions of the word mostly having to do with wine and actual years. This completely ignores all the rest of the definitions, found in the many dictionary listings and used properly by many of us:

  • Characterized by excellence, maturity, and enduring appeal; classic
  • Representing the high quality of a past time: vintage cars; vintage movies.
  • Classic: Recognized as being of high quality and lasting appeal.
  • Old or outmoded.
  • Of the best: "played songs that were vintage Cole Porter".
  • Of the most distinctive: “Fatalism has coexisted with vintage American overconfidence”
  • Of best: Representing what is best or most characteristic of somebody or something.
  • old-fashioned or obsolete: vintage jokes.
  • being the best of its kind: They praised the play as vintage O'Neill.
I deal often with radios, transistor radios, wristwatch, bicycle, radio book, camera and flashlights. If you'll do a search on any of these things with the word vintage, you'll see it has very real and important meaning in the context of the definitions above, and is used quite properly. As far as the year goes, whatever happened to the good old "ca. nnnn", or "ca. 1930s" etc.? Sellers of the above items need to use the word because our buyers use it. Without it any of the above searchs returns 1000's of hits.

So this would fit in with some of the recommendations, and we'd have little problem with whatever is changed about it, with one exception: PLEASE don't get ebay to say that the word requires a year qualifier, because that is simply not true. Dave

a*blessed*child (1236 ) View Listings
a*blessed*child
(27 of 29)
What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-
Oct 14, 2007 11:44 AM
I use vintage for items I find from the 50, 60 70 or finally the 80s. the 90s to me are very questionable. I am 46 yrs old and it is do difficult to find that items in my life time are vintage. Even the 80's when I was in my 20s!
elizcleo (98 ) View Listings
elizcleo
(28 of 29)
What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-
Oct 19, 2007 08:42 AM
Here,Here, I agree with the "vintage" term being widely overused. Just bought an item labeled as such,and found it for sale(brand new)on another website. It is the sellers responsibility to accurately describe their products and to do their homework. Lesson learned.
carpentercrazy (92 ) View Listings
carpentercrazy
(29 of 29)
What does the word "vintage" mean...? This is the answer-
Oct 19, 2007 09:29 AM
Sorry you were burned by the miss-use of the word "vintage". PLEASE PLEASE do all of us a favor and report it to Ebay as misleading discription. If we all do our personal part in reporting, then maybe eventually Ebay will do SOMETHING! Thank you so very much for your support!
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