"vintage" are the beads which are in the 20th century. "Antique" between Christus and 19th century, and "ancient" before Christus

Like car's....Vintage is when you no longer have to take the emissions testing. 25yrs or older and no longer in production. and younger then 75yrs old.

Antique....75-500yrs old

Ancient....1000yrs and older.

Antique really has the largest spread of time...I think

This is my idea of aging items and prob doesn't reflect what others might think about this topic...

BEAD COOL.....Odan

Joost Daalder: "There are no absolutely agreed criteria for the very words themselves, which is a pity.

In many western countries "antique" now does tend to mean "100 years old". When I was younger - say in the 1960s - that concept sometimes was used for e.g. custom duties, but culturally the British, for example, found it unacceptable for e.g. furniture, and were inclined to accept c. 1830 as a reasonable date, arguing that after that the decline into industrialism and a degree of bougeois vulgarity displayed in Victorian taste was so inimical to civilisation that the word "antique" was too positive a term to use for such a phase in history. And I recall that even in the Netherlands the outlook, though less rigid, tended to be somewhat similar. So even on this matter there is no agreement, really.

For the 100-year definition would now "let in" something made in 1915, which many would - quite legitimately - regard as often quite "modern" in taste, with "modernism" already well and truly having asserted itself: in European painting, the year 1905 is now regarded as an important marker for Picasso and others. So "100 years old" is, indeed, an unsatisfactory definition in such a case.

"Vintage" is also a very loose marker: many use it for things made after about 1950 (as something made in 1950 is often not accepted as "antique"); others mean "something like 40 years old" (i.e. "of some age, but not truly old"), etc.

My more simple point made earlier is that many that are NOT native speakers of English and not really familiar with that language use "ancient" simply as meaning "old". In French, for example, "ancient" simply means "old" (though it can also be used for something that's very old!). In English "ancient" has a totally different meaning from just "old" - however far back one goes with it, it must always mean "very old". In a cultural historical sense it often refers back to classical times, i.e. the cultural period when Greece and Rome flourished in antiquity."

Happy Easter

Ancient: 1000+ years

Antique: 100+ years

Vintage: a word without meaning unless attached to a specific time period...Vintage World War 2, for example. Some folks try to define it as 20+ years, such as the Alameda Point Flea Market in N. CA. But that's them.

Ancient: Anything before the year 1400- which is the year the Mongol-Turkic leader Tamerlane sacked Aleppo, one of the glass centers of the ancient world, and seemed to mark the ascendancy of Venice as the premier glass bead-making center of the world.

Antique: 1400 to approximately 100 years ago (WWI as the cut-off)

Vintage: From the end of WWI to about 20 years ago. Based on browsing around flea markets and "antique" stores, it appears that most of the items are much less than 100 years old. And although I don't feel items that are only 20 years old deserve any special label - there is some merit to distinguishing them from "new".

So yeah, pretty soon the new repro beads from China and Indonesian that we've been complaining about for around 10 years, will be regarded as "vintage". Maybe a caution to never, ever throw anything out!

Tempus fugit!