I love vintage charms, the feel, the patina, the way they seem to hold history in stasis; that said there are many modern charms that are wonderful, both brand new styles and replicas of the old styles, and I love those also IF and of course here is the big if – they aren’t represented as vintage. I realize that in a hundred years – or maybe even 20 no one will really care if they were made in 1970 or 1999, but I like to know what I’m buying – because it affects what I’m willing to pay, or selling – because I would never want to misrepresent something.
Ebay has set the vintage bar at 1980’s for charms, just so we all know what the language is on the marketplace. Anything after that is to be listed as either ‘new’ ‘used’ or ‘estate’. For me Estate always meant better vintage jewelry and anything recent but older than the last 10 years was retro. Antique is at least 100 years old or technically before the 1870’s beginning of the machine age, Victorian is 1837-1901, Edwardian is 1901 – 1910, Art Deco is around the 1920’s though it has come to describe the style rather than the time, Art Nouveau ran from roughly 1890- 1915, and the Arts and Crafts style ran through all those times in different countries. The first World War changed the style of charms so I tend to think of that as the break between antique and vintage. After the war factories did more of the assembly line large volume they had perfected in the home plants. They needed the large volume too- there’s nothing like thinking you may die to make you spend rather than save. You can’t take it with you but toys are more fun than bank notes in the meantime.
