Vintage for vintage sake

One can not deny the current Zeitgeist of the "vintage".  Its everywhere.  

Shops are popping up on every trendy high street, random stalls are appearing in markets and charity shops are no longer somewhere where you wore dark glasses as you ducked in and ducked out again with your loot.  And don't they know it.  They all hide a copy of an out-dated Millers Antiques under the counter and price their stuff accordingly (when their not keeping the really good stuff for themselves).  I know you do......I'm not jealous. Like the vintage monsters we are, we enter with a vision of finding something special and cheap, and leave their stores feeling self-righteous and like we got a REAL bargain: "It was only £35....it's vintage you know!".  £35 from a charity shop!  We used to call such items "second-hand" back in the day.

I very often refer to items as vintage when the object is of an era that is bygone and there is some significance to it: Its rare, symbolic or iconic of a time past.  It's has to say something.

Let's go back. Not way back, but just far enough to gain some perspective and view the facts.  

The origins of the word vintage, as many people will know and probably remember, lie in the process of picking grapes and making a finished drinkable alcoholic product: namely wine.  In fact, a common misconception amongst wine drinkers and traders is that vintage means a wine that is old or of a high quality.  Actually, the term vintage refers to a wine that was made from grapes grown and harvested in the same season of a particular year.  You often hear wine makers refer to such wines as being made in a "good year" and thus they are "vintage wines".

In modern day use, especially during the last couple of decades. The word vintage has become a term used to refer to any item that is old. Clothes, furniture and old broken toys are just a handful of items that are now dug up out of lofts, basements and musty cupboards and being peddled EVERYWHERE as "vintage".  This is fine.  In fact I am glad that people have begun to realise that old is gold and that at the present rate of consumerism and our "throw-away" attitudes, current levels are not realistically sustainable.  However, what really bugs me is that this commonly used label commands a premium regardless of the quality or provenance of the object or item.  Many a store holder has tried to convince me that their old unusable rusty garden bench is vintage and well worth the 300 quid asking price.  Sorry. No.

It's old so it must be worth a lot.

Not true.  Firstly, something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.  Secondly, if the object is more common than Delboy Trotter and less useful than a waterproof tea bag, no one will want it regardless of how old it is.

So, it appears that like the so-called wine connoisseurs of recent times, the current vintage zeitgeist has allowed the meaning of the term vintage to deviate from it's root once more.

The term vintage has gone from referring to a wine made in a good year to an old or high quality wine: this definition then leaps from meaning old and high quality wines to referring to anything old or antique.  However, anything old or antique now seems to include a lot of old and sometimes unjustly priced junk.

I too am guilty of misusing the term vintage (in it's original form)....but I myself.....love junk.