Collectors Dating: Age is a factor

Some of my collections are self dated, books with print or publish dates, magazines with the year and month and post cards with stamped cancel dates. Other items are dated by design elements by era – deco style, arts and crafts, Victorian, post war modern, depression glass.

Glassware, pottery, jewelry, paintings and other art forms evolve over time with avant garde today, passe tomorrow, but adding to the date-ability. Post card styles and processes become easily identifiable after studying dated examples.

Price guides {found at brick and mortar and on line stores} help to date items with time lines of the maker’s mark used. Country names change, Germany, Western Germany, West Germany and back to Germany. Occupied Japan is a favorite labeling for many figurine collectors, used from the end of the war until 1952, Nippon is older than Made in Japan.

Let’s look at other clues for age recognition that will help date lots of vintage items. First off, many items of a mechanical nature were stamped, printed or had a patent date or number cast onto the product. US patent #1 was issued in 1836 to protect the inventor from copycat product. By 1911 one million patents were issued. The two million mark was reached in 1935 and it only took till 1961 to pass three million. Design patents started in 1843 with D1.

Photographs in my collection are easy to date, many just by the dress of the subject, items or places in the background. Here I also have a Web site to help. Classy Image

Packaging, which adds greatly to the value of many products and often is a collectible unto itself, may also provide dating clues. The name of a manufacturer can be traced to a set time line, and the address is also helpful. In 1943 a two digit postal code was added to addresses in larger cities, (for example, Milwaukee 10 Wis.) and in 1963 Postmaster General John Gronouski promoted the five digit ZIP code at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland. The Zip + 4 was introduced in 1983.

The next addition to package dating is the UPC code, now found on everything from pencils to railroad cars. First patented in 1952 the product code was a circular pattern of  concentric circles of varying widths created by Bernard Silver and fellow college student Joe Woodland, at Drexel Institute, from a request by a grocery store owner looking for a quick price recognition system at the check out counter. The first commercial use didn’t occur till 1966 with the first bar code scan of a package of Wrigley Gum. It became an industry standard in 1973.

The traditional abbreviations {Wis., ILL. Conn.}, were amended to a two letter system by the US postal Service in 1987.

Phone numbers from small towns advertising items I have sold (Drug Store Labels) had one or two digit phone numbers. In larger cities a telephone exchange location would be named and the first two letters acted as the Alpha prefix followed by four and later five numbers. (MI tichell 1000). New York had used the two alpha – five digit dialing system starting in the 1930, with others adapting to five numbers in 1950. Most but not all phone systems adapted the number only dial system with some merchants continuing to prefix the five numbers with the older letters in their advertising well into the 1970s.

Some items are best left to an appraisal expert if you’re not sure of an item’s age or can’t confirm its provenance. Furniture styles are reintroduced as demand for a style is revived. Paintings need an expert to confirm age and authenticity.

And with all collections, new or old, it’s the hunting for and the display of, your trophy items that makes collecting fun.