As usuall, I again want to probe the 'obvious'. Given all the intersting talk here about 'vintage' pens: looking backward in time, when does the 'vintage' period start in generall/ for you/as commonly accepted/as bitterly disputed ? 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s?

MMMM interesting question.... I was born in 1948 .. My wife claims I am vintage.... or is that just OLD...
I like to think anything 40yrs or more... but what do I know... I'm OLD

I think that vintage is in the 1950s back while old is 1960 onto 1980 then into modern.



That's my breakdown at least.

K

It is a good question. In Texas I know that vintage cars become vintage at the age of 25 - the state actually allows them to begin running without catalytic converters at that age (a part that cuts down big time on pollution). I would guess that most people have their own sense about whether something is vintage or not, and that we'll never be able to actually pin a date to it that everyone would agree with as the younger limit. I think it's similar to how most of us also kind of just have a "sense" about whether something is "vintage" or just old (Potty Mouth)!

Here's what I say about vintage on my site, on the page that introduces my collection:

Excellently put Richard. The "51" was exactly what came to mind when I thought of pens that could be considered both vintage or not by picking some arbitrary year.

If we wanted to look at some agreed meanings, I suppose we could model ourselves on the old motor-car aficion: Veteran, Vintage, Post-Vintage Thoroughbred, Classic. Which recognizes that up to a certain point, even schlock is interesting if it's old enough, but after that point it's only *good* old stuff that's worth keeping.

I, too, think of about 1960 as some kind of watershed. It would be reasonable to take the widespread use of reliable ball-points as marking a real era in the history of writing instruments, like the rise of quartz in the history of timekeepers.

Best

Michael

to whom a "51" is definitely vintage, but a 75 not, though a fine and collectable pen

Would all this rating/classifiying of pens make models like the new Parker Duofold 'retro'?

Now that's just a whole other bag of worms. Ahh ... the finer distinctions that drive consumptions (and markets for that matter).

The year of my birth will one day mark the beginning of modern time, therefore anything made more than 23 years ago...

Realistically, I'm tempted to draw a line around the introduction of cartridge fill pens. So, the Parker 51 and all Sheaffer touchdown and snorkel models would be considered vintage, and any cartridge pens introduced to replace them are modern. That would put the line at various places in the 60's

I've got a fountain pen book at home that has sections in it such as vintage, modern etc.. I'll look at it tonight and see where it draws the line.

Gary

Nice one aeon; I think cartridges could make a good divider of truly vintage and modern.

Gary: yes, will be interesting to hear what your book says.

Oh, yes. But the most selfconsciously retro, IMO, are Waterman. The Phileas is quite jokingly a pastiche of pastness. BTW, one of my peeves is the fact that Waterman built a pen that is clearly an homage to the 100 Year Pen, and then named it for a dance from the wrong decade. It shouldn't be called the Charleston, but more like the Lindy Hop.

Some of the MB LEs are based on earlier models, most notably the Hemingway.

All the best

Michael

Well I looked up in my pen book and they consider any pre 1945 as vintage.

Gary

I'm old but not Vintage!

I vote "pre-1960".

I would have to say that anything made before 1970 to me would be considered vintage.

The introduction of cartridges does seem like a logical point.
Or I would say about 40yrs for vintage.

I'll throw in my vote for the 1960 threshold also. My Mom always hung her hat on 1950 though.

To me, VINTAGE PENS ended in any of these periods:

1950s - With the introduction of practical ballpoint pens.

- Whenever it was that converters & cartridges became the standard filling-systems for fountain pens (thus phasing out all the other kinds - Aerometric, button, lever etc).

If you asked me for a TIME PERIOD, I would have to say the 1950s or 60s. A lot of stuff changed after WWII.

Hmm, so would a T-1 be vintage, or modern?

The Charleston was the first step I learned when I learned to Lindy. The Savoy Charleston in the 30s and 40s was more popular and widespread than the Charleston was in the 20s, and AFAIK at the time they didn't make the distinction in the name except sometimes to call it the Swing Charleston.

Hmm. I'll bet no one ever makes a "slam" or "mosh" pen modeled after the styles of the 80s.

vintage means "20 years or older", and comes from french language in wich 20 is pronounced "vint". By this means a french late P75 would be "vintage"...

now with "modern" we're splitting 2 or more variables: style vs. dating. As far as style goes, i.e. chrysler's building is clearly modern, but architectonichally speaking.

Huh? Are you sure about this etymology? because i find this....

"c.1450, "harvest of grapes, yield of wine from a vineyard," from Anglo-Fr. vintage (1353), from O.Fr. vendage "yield from a vineyard," from L. vindemia "a gathering of grapes, yield of grapes," from comb. form of vinum "wine" + stem of demere "take off" (from de- "from, away from" + emere "to take;" see exempt). Sense shifted to "age or year of a particular wine" (1746), then to a general sense of "being of an earlier time" (1883). Used of cars since 1928."


citation: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search...searchmode=none

I will just say what it means to me... I denote as "vintage," anything produced prior to about the mid to late forties. The demarkation for me is when the ball point largely supplanted the fountain pen as the writing instrument of general use. I call pens from the mid-forties to the mid to late seventies or so, "modern." I reserve the word "contemprorary" for those made after the mid-seventies. The distinction between "modern" and "contemporary" being (in my own mind only, I'm sure) when I percieve the fountain pen as transitioning as the writing instrument of a few odd-ball troglodytes to a status symbol/luxury item (where it is clearly marketed today). I'm probably out of the mainstream in this usage, but it makes sense to me.


Dave

Hmm, yeah I always thought vintage was a term from the wine business that refers to a particular year / harvest. Wines are aged for many years and certain vintages (harvests / years) are prized more than others. This style of speaking among wine fanciers leaked over into common speech as such terms often do. I personally define vintage as referring to something that older, really good, and usually not made anymore. (The 1962 vintage of such-and-such wine will never occur again and when it's gone it's gone). It's a very fuzzy term for me because its use depends on the rate of change in the field I want to apply it to. The computer field evolves at a tremendous rate and so a computer game from 1995 would be a vintage game--even though it's only 12 years old, it's truly ancient today.

It's interesting to me to note that when I was a kid in the 1950's, the term antique was not a fuzzy term and it meant 100 years old or more. Calling something antique that was not 100 years old was considered fraud. Over time, probably for marketing reasons, "antique" became 75, then 50, and now it seems to be 25 years. We live in a faster society today. A hundred years ago, a piece of furniture that was 20 years old was still considered new. Today, 20 year old furniture is considered old.

Anyway, those are my observations on these fuzzy terms.

Oh, and if I was forced to pick a demarcation year for vintage, it would be pre-1960. And a question for me is what will my opinion be in the year 2020? Will I move the year forward or leave it at 1960?

For autos to get a vintage tag in our state they have to be 25 years old. But that defination just doesn't work for me Vintage autos are from before I started driving so that would be late 60's early 70's. So for pens I'd have to go with before I started writing! Early 50's would fit my defination but I will have to say My vintage would be anything before 1950.

I'd incline with Shangas and say 'vintage' in the FP world ought to mean 'Before Ballpoints Ruled The World', which pretty much overlaps with Richard's 1960 threshold. Of course, 'vintage' on eBay generally means 'older than "brand new" and newer than "antique"'

Wouldn't it be nice if there were an actual definition to the term "vintage?" Intellectually, I am of a mind that it would be 40-years old or older. In the pen world, from 2007 that would put the cut off in the 1960's, which overlaps the gereral acceptance of ball points. Emotionally, though, I still think of "vintage" as pens introduced during or before the 1950's. I say "intorduced" so that pens like the Parker 51 would be included, though it was manufacturered through the 1960's (in South America).

It is difficult for me to have a feel for terms that apply to the age of objects. At my age, I have furniture that is going on 30-years old that I use every day. Some of my mother's everyday furniture is going on 50-years old.

I have several fountain pens that I consider vintage due to their "mileage" not their age. :0)

Vintage doesn't always have to do with age, but how something is perceived. An example would be wine. Its almost an emotion.

Just 2 cents from a newbie to the board.

I agree with Shangas and Holgate. I consider the term vintage to apply to fountain pens made before the Age of Ballpoints (AB). According to Wikipedia, the first ballpoint pens in the USA were sold at Gimbels department store in New York, in 1945. They were sold in some other countries, including Argentina and Britain prior to that. There were versions of ballpoint pens going back to the late 19th century, but none were practical for writing. I don't know how long it took for ballpoints to take over the market, but 1955-1960 seems fairly close. I haven't had time to research it, but I seem to recall some major fountain pen companies going out of business or being taken over around that time, probably largely due to marketplace competition from the ballpoint.

To summarize, vintage pens, in my opinion, are fountain pens from the time Before Ballpoints (BB) became the primary writing instrument of the masses. The word vintage means "the time that something of quality was produced." Vintage doesn't imply a certain age, but a certain quality. Obviously, fountain pens of very high quality are produced today. But when the ballpoint started to take over, I think it's fair to say that fountain pen manufacturers responded by trying to compete in price and style with the newly popular ballpoint pen. The overall quality of fountain pens decreased. Fountain pens from before that time should be considered vintage.

I tend to agree with Richard, and usually point towards about 1960 as vintage. No good reason, it just seems right to me. Ask again in twenty years, and you'll likely get a different answer though. And as someone else mentioned, do you consider a pen retro? What about antique? I think these are labels that change with the era, and modern pens are likely to take a little longer to fall into the vintage category than past pens.

Afterthought, it seems around 1960 was the end of true fountain pen innovation. Everything after is pretty derivative of what came before, with the cartridge being the last biggish change. You had capillary fillers, snorkels, touchdowns, companies trying all this new stuff to keep market share. I think it is after that boom that one draws the vintage line, because things settled down and we haven't seen that kind of action since. Make sense?

When was the vanishing point developed?

There was the Level 5 system from Pelikan as well.

William

The VP came out in November of 1963.

Well there you go, two innovations in fountain pen technology after 1960.

William

I didn't mean there wasn't any after exactly 1960, it just seems like it was around then the pacing started slowing doing down. Inlaid and Triumph nibs came in as two of the last big advances in nibs, but we haven't seen much movement there. Converters have become popular fillers, but outside of that we still use a lot of the same old piston type fillers and cartridges. We still run on mostly technology that came out of that time period.

Things have definitely slowed down --- one other advance though would be the Sailor Trident 360 nib.

William

Hmm, a "Brand-X" Mosh?

My guess - the nib is designed to break in two, after a few too many rounds of ill-guided, pounding writing!

Or - it'll be a ball-point named that: a 50-cent one!

I could just imagine the delimiter creeping forward with the generations...

Hehe, that's cute.

LMAO!

I LOVE that AB and BB thing... I'm going write about that on my blog.

I guess different things can have different "vintages"?, my general rule is if it is 50 years plus then it is vintage. Does not matter what it is, pen, furniture, car, etc.
best thing about this is that it progresses, this year anything that is made in or before 1957 is vintage, next year it will be 1958 and so on.

One of my students was telling me about an "old guy" and when I asked what her definition of "old" was, she thought for a minute and then said, "Anyone over 25." I could have said, "Phew, good thing because I am 24," but then again, when asked about my age I reply without fail, "I am 100 years old, don't I look good?" I never fail to get compliments from the kids....