Hello all! My other posts have mainly been on watches I have been considering. But while I continue my search this question continued to pop up in my head and I'm curious what the rest of you have to think. This forum itself has separate pages for modern and vintage Omegas. But from what I've seen from the pinned threads on both, neither define when a watch fits into either category. So when does a watch become a vintage watch? As someone in my early years of collecting, I'd like to hear the rationale behind your individual opinions.
In Omega, I think it’s getting safe to call modern everything with superluminova / call vintage everything tritium and radium on hands and dial.
I tend to land on that period of time as well. But it's also strange to me to think of something like a bond seamaster as a vintage piece.
I think there’s a fine line between a few years of ‘classic’ before entering ‘vintage’ My Explorer II is 20 years old and I class that as a ‘classic’ and maybe in 5-10 years I’ll class it as vintage. My 2254 is 15 years old now. That’s entering the ‘classic’ phase...another 10 and I’ll probably class that as vintage then? you can’t define them by super luminova > etc as in 50 years, you can’t call a 50 year old watch modern IMO.
1980 works for me. Most of my Vintage are 50s 60s with one or two early 70s Most of my Moderns are 2006 to now As many, actually heaps of threads and posts have ended up discovering it is personal and myself being almost 50 would have a different opinion to a 25 year old. This Subject does come up every 3 or so months https://omegaforums.net/threads/from-what-year-vintage.27938/#post-311657 https://omegaforums.net/threads/vintage-vs-modern.87407/#post-1130416
The way I see it, vintage for me is: - Anything with tritium/radium on the dial, in essence anything without (super)luminova. - In case of a non-luminous dial, I would have to agree with @killer67, anything previous to 1998.
For me it's a combination of age and certain features. Pre-1980 is safely vintage. However, there are some models from the early 1980s that are clear continuations of 70s models (e.g. acrylic crystal Rolex models) that I also consider vintage. While I realize that 25 years is a nice round number, I'm having trouble feeling that a 1995 tritium Speedmaster is vintage.
I consider vintage up to end of tritium. That seems to work okay for now. I'm not sure if that will work in 20+ years from now. Vintage Modern
Looks like this french watch of mine. To the question, vintage for me is more than 20 years old. More than 100 years old and i call it antique.
I was born in 1980; anything older than that is vintage. I suppose in 20 years I'll still draw the line there, though I reckon that someone born in 2000 will draw it elsewhere.