If you’re reading this chances are you’ve caught the vintage bug. Meaning you have a soft spot for things that are older. There is a difference between an antique collector and a vintage collector. A true antique is considered to be something 100 years old or more. Vintage only needs to be 20 years old. I don’t know about you, but I have things in my closet older than 20 years.
Collecting vintage and antiques can and do overlap. And there is nothing wrong with that. A true antique collector may become enamored with something from their childhood years. Just as a vintage lover may find older pieces fascinating as well. There is no right or wrong way to collect. That’s the beauty of it. The saying goes, “3 or more items make a collection.” So with that in mind, we are all collectors. Because I know you own more than three t-shirts, pairs of shoes, dishes, or pots and pans.
But back to catching the vintage bug. Those of us who love vintage usually start with childhood memories. Things we had as kids, or remember from our parent’s or grandparents’ homes. Things that bring us back in time and make us smile. For me, those memories start with my grandmother’s house. As a child, I spent many weekends with my grandmother. The box of buttons that I could endlessly sort, her brightly colored Fiestaware dishes, the figurines on the shelves that she let me play with, and even the furniture that I still own. But the collecting part began a bit later…
When I was growing up my mother worked in downtown Los Angeles. For much of my life, she was a single parent, meaning that money could sometimes be tight. She was raised in the depression years and that had an effect on her. But my mother liked nice things. Like many women in the 1960s, she began collecting teacups and saucers. Affording the prices at antique stores, even then was out of the question. So she found another way.
Down the street from her office was and still is a Goodwill store. Back then it was two stories with all the things we expect to find in a thrift store on the bottom floor. Upstairs was a whole different world though. There were two large rooms upstairs one on either side of the wide central staircase. On the right was a veritable boutique filled with high-end vintage clothing, jewelry, and accessories, including purses, scarves, hats, and anything else a well-dressed woman of the past would have in her closet. I could only peek in there as they had a strict no children without adults policy and my mother had no interest in someone else’s clothing. One of the results of living through the Great Depression.
On the left was a room filled with china, crystal, porcelain, and everything you would expect to find in a well-appointed dining room and living room. Stacks of plates, urns, bowls, and of course teacups. Names like Royal Staffordshire, Limoges, Meisen, Here is where you could find my mother every Saturday for hours on end. She would spend ages carefully choosing and discussing the merits of one teacup over another with the woman who worked behind the counter there. The limited funds she had to spend needed to stretch giving her the best possible selection for her money.
Meanwhile, as a bored pre-teen, I would wander my way back downstairs and dig through the racks of clothing, piles of stainless cutlery, and shelves of vases, pots and pans and whatever had been donated that week. Occasionally I would find a funky vintage dress or blouse and beg my mom to buy it for me.
Her collection grew steadily over the years until the earthquake in 1971 when the majority of her well-curated accumulation was shattered. With the demise of her precious collection gone, she stopped going to the Goodwill. But by then, the seed had been planted and I was a full-fledged vintage junkie. I remember digging through large steamer trunks in the garage and finding neatly folded 1950s full-circle skirts that my mother had packed away. I wore those skirts to high school in the 1970s along with anything else I could find that was from previous generations. My look was funky and eclectic.
Thus began my obsession with vintage collecting. Over the years, I’ve owned some fabulous pieces. Bought and sold multitudes of items. As my tastes have changed and circumstances evolved I’ve collected everything from Fiestaware to art pottery, wooden toys to Bakelite. While I tend to be a minimalist overall, keeping my collections on the small side, I will never stop being a vintage fanatic. The older I get, the more meaning those memories hold.
If you too are a collector of vintage or would like to become one, here are some sites with tips on collecting:
SBS Zipper has some great articles for button collectors.
Monterey Farmgirl has a lovely post about collecting antique teacups.
The Vintage Fashion Guild is a wealth of knowledge on vintage clothing, designers, care, labels, and more.
If you’re fascinated by Fiestaware, Driving for Deco has an in-depth series on Fiestaware.
Over the years, we have written many articles on collecting various vintage items. You can read those articles here.
Have you caught the vintage bug? What do you collect, and how did you get started? Tell us your story in the comments below. We would love to know.
2 comments
I loved your story of how you started collecting, Pam. Coincidentally, it was also my grandmother who got me started. I grew up in the military, never living anywhere longer than four years. That meant we always traveled light….so sadly, I have no real collections from our travels abroad. However, between transfers, we’d spend a month or two at my grandparents’ home in South Dakota where I learned to love reading and developed an appreciation for early American history. She must have convinced my minimalist dad that stamps would be easy to travel with because I still have the stamp collection she started for me when I was in 3rd grade!! A 500-page stamp album and a year’s subscription to the “stamps of the month” club spawned a lifetime of collecting. Which reminds me, I really should get that album out and see what treasures it might contain. I know I don’t have an “inverted Jenny” but who knows what else I stumbled upon as a kid???
The things we inadvertently learn as children, the love of collecting and appreciation of older items definitely shapes who we become as adults. Hopefully we pass that on to our own grandkids. How fun that you still have your stamp collection.