Fitting Into the Antique World

Alison loves to go antique stores.  I love her, so I often gladly go with her.  It's not all bad.  Although I don't share much interest in furniture, or most household goods and accessories, I do enjoy seeing older books, records, toys, unusual knickknacks or other items with an interesting history.

Recently, Alison went to a new store with her mother.  I asked her how it was (i.e., was it going to be worth me visiting), and she said it was okay but there weren't many antiques.  Really, I ask.  Well, what was in there?  She answered that most of the items weren't very old, that they were vintage at best.  Vintage?  What was that?  Wasn't that just another word for antique?

So that started me on a quest - what was the difference between antique and vintage, and also a third word I'd heard a lot in the antique world, collectible.  I asked Alison,  I googled. I checked online dictionaries.  I read discussion threads where people were debating the meanings of the three. I posted my query on Facebook.

Needless to say, the results were not uniform.  They seemed to be words whose meanings varied and were used differently by different people.  The following are my own impressions of antique world word war -

Antique is definitely the word for the oldest stuff.  How old varied quite a bit.  I often heard at least fifty years old, but other time frames were used, up to one hundred years.  It's kind of vague.  I think of it as, if you're middle aged, it has to be at least as old as your Grandma when she was a young adult.  Now what's also true is that much of the stuff found in many antique stores, aren't really antiques. Much of what I see in the stores is only from the 80s, 70s or 60s, and that does make the shortest time frame I heard to qualify as an antique - fifty years old.

Wait.  Let me do some quick math here.  It's 2015, so that means fifty years ago was...1965!  Hole Moley!  I was a wee kid back then!  That means some of the stuff I had, some of the stuff I played with as a kid, those would be antiques!  Oh, no!  It might mean more than that!  It might mean that...I'm an antique!

Oh, well.  Given Alison's hobby, that might help explain why she likes me.  One of the most popular pictures of me is one Benjamin took of Alison and I by the side of the American Pickers van, with the word antique on the van , and an arrow from the word pointed straight at my head.

Vintage was defined as something less than fifty years old, but it was also connected to things that improve with age, or become more notable or unique.  It's most frequently used with wine.  I see it in some of the antique stores connected with clothing, particularly for clothes that have come back into vogue again (also sometimes called retro, which sounds like a word Scooby Doo would say).  To me, vintage suggests a certain level of preservation that may or may not be required in an antique.  I like to think of myself as vintage, well preserved and just getting slap better with time.  That's harder to do on mornings where you wake up with aches and pains, and it takes you ten minutes to remember if you made the coffee, and another fifteen minutes to try to remember how you do make coffee.

Collectibles could be antiques or vintage.  They could also be something that came out just last week, like the Minion figures at McDonald's (who may be cursing if you believe some stories - of course, that just enhances their collectability). They are usually a series of related items, and the goal is to collect as many of a set as possible.  My favorite, comic books, are considered collectibles, and one of my main goals is to get complete runs of Superman and Action Comics.  Some are way too expensive, because in addition to being collectibles, some of them are well over fifty years old, and are also antiques.  And then some are in "vintage" or near mint condition.  Which means these three terms can actually be inter-related.  Am I collectible?  Probably not, unless you're trying to start a collection of aging community theater actors.

Finally, just to add to the confusion, someone brought up the term relic.  That is something rare, that represents another time or era, an artifact more suitable for Indiana Jones or a museum than an antique store. Although opinions vary, I don't think I've hit relic status yet.

But, who knows?  Give me some more time, and we'll see.  That collectible, vintage antique, slowly careening to relic status, may be just around the corner!