What defines Vintage vs Modern?

[The Elevator]

My sincerest apologies if somebody has done this already, but I would like to inquire about the definitions of the commonly used terms Vintage and Modern. 

 

1:  Is there a certain commonly-accepted year of delineation, like 2000? Or is there a more general and broad period of time, such as Sheaffer´s abandonment of their traditional US manufacturing sites in the early 2000s?

 

2:  does it vary per the type of pen in question? For example, an original mid-century Parker 51 VS the modern attempt at a remake?

 

3:  does it vary per whether the pen is discontinued or still in production? For example, the now-discontinued TWSBI 530, VS the modern replacement, the 580? Does this make my particular variant of the Platinum Preppy WA from the 2021 release a “vintage” pen?

 

Obviously, there is probably no real universal answer to this question. I am simply looking to collect some opinions, pointers, and useful information as I start gearing up to enter the vintage fountain pen world. If you know of any particularly interesting “vintage VS modern” case studies, I would be delighted to read about them. 

 

Moderators, if you know about an older thread that this would merge well into, *please* do it. In a bygone era, I was once a forums moderator, and I know how ridiculous redundant threads can get. I am simply at present not able to find a thread that explicitly discusses this topic. (I could also just be blind)

[Paul-in-SF]

On a strictly personal level: I have three categories in my pen database, Vintage, Modern Used, and New. The pen is new if I bought it new and it was in production when I bought it (I have only been into pens for 4 years, so anything I bought new was pretty recent). I apply the category Modern Used to pens from the 80's to the 2010's or possibly later, as long as they were out of production when I bought them and they were used (also includes New Old Stock from that era) when I bought them. Anything earlier than the 80's is Vintage to me, unless it's old enough to be antique (100 years or more old) but I don't have any pens that old. The difference between Vintage and Modern may be a bit shaded, but there is a big gap (in years) among my pens between the two, because I haven't been interested in pens from the 70's or early 80's. These are rough categories, maybe, but I haven't had any problem deciding where a new acquisition fits in them. As I said, a strictly personal categorization. 

[txomsy]

Simple: if it is older than you and good quality, it is vintage.

 

You cannot set a predefined date, as it is a moving target. Vintage has connotations of quality from old times. This will be different for each of us. As @Paul-in-SF said, something you can/could buy new and in production is new. Things that are out of production are not necessarily vintage: a limited edition pen produced only for a very short period (e.g. the MB Calligraphy) will not automagically become vintage the day it goes out of production.

 

Thus, each of us will have their own definition. Which is to say, when you see anything advertised as vintage, you should just ignore the word totally (specially with many Chinese products which all seem to somehow be "vintage" even if just issued to the market yesterday) and decide by yourself if the word really applies.

 

For many, vintage is anything their parents would use. Hence, a generational thing. And basically, what I started with: something prior to when you were born and that offers specific advantages that one cannot find in current products (otherwise it is just plain old or old-fashioned).

[inkstainedruth]

My personal take on the question is that "vintage" (for pens) is prior to 1960, which is, IIRC, when the Parker 45 was first released.  As the first commercially viable cartridge/converter pen, it was certainly a game changer in the industry.

Of course I'm *also* the person who freaks when I see record albums from the 1970s and 1980s (or even later!) for sale in antiques stores.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[shalitha33]

In my view sometimes items older than 20 -30 years can be called vintage. However this can change based on what we are talking about, and for pens its probably closer to the 30 rather than 20. 

Its probably better to group them based on changes to the technology rather than time. for an example parker 45 could be more modern than a modern pen. Its fully modular, user maintainable, easily to clean, user can disassemble without any specific knowledge, tools  or skills. If the nib or converter is busted or is not to their liking, can get a replacement over the counter and replace it DIY. If you look at Sheaffer, a Sheaffer imperial C/C is no different to anything today. Sheaffer imperials with touchdown fillers are the smoothest filling system i have used so far.

There are many other ways to look at braking down pens without going antique , vintage and modern. You can look at it as early hard rubber, early celluloid, early plastic age, modern materials. Another way would be to focus on nibs, early nibs which are very flexible, pre-war nibs that are flexible and durable, interwar pens, war times pens with restrictions on gold etc, post war more firm but smooth nibs, the goldarn age with some companies going for modular designs, 80s-90s chepo nibs, more modern ones after that.  you can do the same with feed designs going from barely working to figuring out how it would work the best.

If you look at it as "starting date when a pen become reliable, feel and write as a pen from today", that date would depend on the brand in question. around 60s most manufacturers have figured out how to make a good solid pen. And the they forgot how to do that in the late 70s.

[PAKMAN]

My personal definition is it has to be older than me to be vintage, but I also think before the advent of the ball point is a good break point for fountain pens to be vintage. 

[Wahl]

15 hours ago, PAKMAN said:

My personal definition is it has to be older than me to be vintage, but I also think before the advent of the ball point is a good break point for fountain pens to be vintage. 

 

Agree with Pakman, when ballpoints became popular, injection molded plastics... these are modern pens. And that means around 1950, which also happens to be a round, mid century date.

 

Before that, we have vintage, and I even have a few which are, or very close to be, antiques, more than 100 years old !

[miwishi63]

I agree with @PAKMANthat the advent of the ballpoint is a good break point. The term "vintage" is relative, however, as others have pointed out. I apply the term to my pens using criteria similar to that used by Arizona to qualify for an "Historic Vehicle" plate. The car must be in as close to original condition as possible, especially if it has been restored, and at least 25 years old. My daily driver is old enough to qualify but is not a classic car model. The vintage pens in my collection are ones produced before 1950 that are considered classics (Vacumatic, P51, Sheaffer Flat Top, etc.) Some of my pens are from the late 1910s and early 1920s. I classify these as antiques. Third-tier pens and non-collectible pens that are older than me are just "old" but valuable to me personally, nonetheless. 

[amberleadavis]

This is my unofficial break down.

 

Used = Anything that has been inked before.  I love used pens.  And pens can be Antique and still NEW as in never used.

Modern = Anything within the last 20 or so years.

Vintage = 1950-2000

Antique = Pre WWII

 

Ball points were invented in 1888 by Attorney Inventor John J Loud.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201028-history-of-the-ballpoint-pen

 

But I don't think ballpoints became popular until after WWII.  Others will have more info.

[Ron Z]

My personal definition is it has to be older than me to be vintage, 

 

You know my friend, that is getting to be hard to stick to.  You know that's true when you walk into an antique store and find a copy of your college  yearbook on the shelf. A Parker 51 is vintage, but some are younger/newer than I am.  It's also true when you've been collecting (or repairing) fountain pens for over 30 years.

 

I would put pens made in the 70s or early 80s  and back in the vintage category. 

[miwishi63]

45 minutes ago, amberleadavis said:

This is my unofficial break down.

 

Used = Anything that has been inked before.  I love used pens.  And pens can be Antique and still NEW as in never used.

Modern = Anything within the last 20 or so years.

Vintage = 1950-2000

Antique = Pre WWII

 

Ball points were invented in 1888 by Attorney Inventor John J Loud.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201028-history-of-the-ballpoint-pen

 

But I don't think ballpoints became popular until after WWII.  Others will have more info.

👍

[Mercian]

I am tempted by @PAKMAN’s definition of ‘vintage’ - any pen older than I am is ‘vintage’, anything my age or younger is, obviously, ‘modern’ 😁

 

I am also tempted by HMG’s definition of ‘vintage’ car - if your car was built/first registered more than 40 years before the start of the current tax year, you can get an exemption from having to pay VED (aka ‘Road Tax’) on it. That would place any pen that pre-dates 1982 in the ‘vintage’ category (and me with it 😢).

 

Both of those definitions are problematic though, in that the first varies by person, and the second is a ‘moving target’.

I therefore think that the one provided by @inkstainedruth may well be the best one - because it is analogous to the terminology used to differentiate the ‘Stone Age’/‘Bronze Age’/‘Iron Age’ periods of pre-history.

 

I think that describing a pen produced/designed in the age before cartridge/converter pens as ‘vintage’ is fair enough.

In a similar vein, anything that pre-dates the Parker “51” could be defined as ‘antique’.

 

Would we also need to add another category for pens that post-date, say, 1980?

Or stick to defining all pens’ age by the quarter-century in which they were designed/produced - e.g. fourth quarter 20th century, 2nd quarter 20th century, 1st quarter 21st century? 🤷‍♂️

 

As a general rule though, when one is looking at an auction, I think that the term ‘vintage’ conveys only as much useful information as do the terms ‘rare’ and ‘collectable’ - ‘tis nobbut marketing blurb!

[Mercian]

13 minutes ago, Ron Z said:

I would put pens made in the 70s or early 80s  and back in the vintage category. 

Go on, tell the whole world that those ‘silver’ hairs in my beard are really grey, whydon’tcha? 😫

😉

 

To be fair, I do think that your system has merit (like our govt’s 40-year age for ‘vintage’ cars) - and you certainly have enough experience and ‘market savvy’ to consider your opinion as being reliable/authoritative.

[Inkoherent]

I also like @PAKMAN’s answer.  I’d love to refine it a bit to say that the breakpoint of vintage should be when “pen” stopped being synonymous with “fountain pen”, but I’m not sure exactly when that would have been.

[welch]

I think vintage is everything before cartridge / converters became standard, beginning around 1960 with the Parker 45. By about 1970, nearly all the "I carry my own filling system inside" pens had become C/C and pens had become made by swappable components. Pen companies shut down most of their repair departments.  Of course, a few German companies continued to make piston-fillers, but pen companies no longer compete for the cleanest filling system. Nothing like the way Sheaffer and Parker competed from about 1925 - 1960.

 

That makes the ultimate fountain pens the Sheaffer Pen for Men and the capillary Parker 61. 

[amper]

The generally accepted definition of "vintage" in most fields of collectibles is "25 years old or older"; however, in some specific categories, other factors may be more or less relevant, like significant changes in design or production quality, changes of company ownership, or the like.

The other problem with this is, of course, gatekeeping, particularly by older collectors, who have a vested interest in increasing the value of their vintage collections by disdaining the vintage status of newer items. This is particularly a sticky issue in guitars that I encounter often, because I am a musician, among other things. Older collectors keep trying (often successfully) to shift the goal posts, such that many will refuse to acknowledge any guitar made after 1969 as "vintage", and quite a few go back even further. Many well-heeled younger people buy into this gatekeeping, especially young men in the tech industry with lots of disposable income, because it benefits them to do so, and the higher prices are no barrier to their status-seeking.

I confidently call my first generation production Pelikan M800 a vintage pen, even though it's also accurate to say that the M800, which was introduced in 1987, is the beginning of the "modern" era of Pelikan pens.

My M800 is now over 35 years old. Had I bought a 35 year old pen in 1987, it would have been a 1952 pen, and no one in 1987 would have dared suggest a 1952 model wasn't vintage. Similarly, I am the original owner of a 1990 Rickenbacker 330 guitar, which is now 33 years old. Had I purchased a 33 year old Rickenbacker in 1990, I would have been buying a 1957 modern guitar, and no one would have dared suggest a 1957 model wasn't vintage, but I have literally been banned from vintage guitar Internet forums for claiming my 1990 guitar is a vintage guitar.

[amper]

I would say that, when it comes to stationery items and art supplies, a related category, there was a significant shift in society beginning in the early 1990s, when the commercial art world moved to desktop publishing tools, and the business world moved to electronic personal organizers and email and abandoned paper-based organizers and communications. This caused a dramatic decline in the use of fine pens and paper and related products, and so many products and companies went defunct during the 1990s. That only accelerated once the iPhone came out in 2007.

One of the most significant factors in the revival of fountain pen use in recent years is the fact that most places no longer require signatures for the use of a credit card. In the early 2000's, I bought myself a Graf von Faber-Castell Rhodium Guilloche rollerball just to have a nice pen to whip out when the dinner check came at a fancy restaurant, or I needed to sign a receipt at a fancy hotel. Now that I no longer need to write on thermal paper frequently, if at all, my fountain pens see a lot more use, because I don't have to carry a non-fountain pen in my handbag or my Filofax, any longer. But, I wouldn't consider my 2002 Graf von Faber-Castell to be vintage. That pen is still in current production with no significant changes, even though it is now over 20 years old.

So, in these areas, anything before 1990, and possibly up to 1995, can pretty much be regarded as vintage without question. So much of what was still available in the early 1990s is now long gone, never to return. In the case of Pelikan, the M800 was significantly redesigned (some would say to its detriment) in 1997, so I think I would not call any new style M800 a vintage pen, at least, not yet.
 

[Karmachanic]

How long is a piece of string?

[PPPR]

46 minutes ago, Karmachanic said:

How long is a piece of string?

Just long enough. ;0) (Couldn't resist.)

 

As others have noted, "vintage" is a subjective term with a "generally accepted" definition. From examples on the Intertubes, though, many folks don't have a clue about these conventions or choose to ignore them. For reasons that elude me, many define a discontinued item as vintage even if that was last week.

 

Since there is no conformity for the definition, my cut off between vintage and modern is 1960 based on the increasing popularity of those abominations, cartridge pens. My mom got her first cartridge pen in 1959, a Lady Skripsert. My first FP, a cartridge-only pen, was acquired in 1963 when school handwriting lessons switched from printing to cursive.

 

Obviously, I don't adhere to the was-I-alive-at-the-time-of-production definition, but this is subjective after all. Whatever you do, puh-lease don't ask for the definition of "rare." ;0)

[I-am-not-really-here]

2 hours ago, amper said:

The generally accepted definition of "vintage" in most fields of collectibles is "25 years old or older"

My antiquated brain cells say that the "25 years rule" originates from automobiles.  Though that was an easy cutoff at the time to differentiate leaded gas engines from unleaded ones and whether seatbelts came factory installed.