Antique, Vintage or Estate: What Those Words Actually Mean

Antique, vintage and estate get used as though they were graded categories with fixed rules behind them. Two of the three are not defined anywhere in jewellery law. We downloaded the full text of the FTC Jewelry Guides, 16 CFR Part 23, the regulation that governs how jewellery may be described in the United States, and searched it: the words antique, vintage and estate appear zero times. There is no age threshold in it at all. Here is what the words actually mean, where the famous 100-year rule really comes from, and what to check before you buy.

Estate Means Used. That Is the Whole Definition.

Estate is the easiest of the three because it carries no age claim whatsoever. A piece is estate if it has had a previous owner. A ring sold new in 2024, worn twice and traded in this spring is estate jewellery. So is a Georgian mourning brooch. The word tells you about ownership history and nothing about age, style or quality.

This matters commercially, because estate is the term a shop can always use safely and buyers often read as a synonym for old. When you see it on a tag, the only thing you have learned is that you are not the first owner. Ask the follow-up question: how old, and how do you know?

Where the 100-Year Rule Actually Comes From

The 100-year antique threshold is real, but it belongs to customs law rather than jewellery marketing. US Customs and Border Protection explains in its guidance on works of art, collector's pieces and antiques that antiques are classified under tariff heading 9706, and that to qualify as an antique for CBP purposes an article must be over 100 years of age at the time of importation.

That is a duty classification, written to decide what tax applies at a border. CBP is direct about the consequence of getting it wrong: if an item entered as an antique turns out to be under 100 years old, a duty of 6.6 percent applies for goods under column 1-general treatment, free for goods originating in Canada, or 25 percent under column 2 treatment.

Two details in that same CBP document matter for jewellery specifically, and they are the sort of thing that never makes it into a shop tag. First, loose pearls and precious or semi-precious stones are excluded from heading 9706 even when over 100 years old. Second, restoration can cost a piece its antique status: CBP states that if the essential character is changed, or more than 50 percent of the item has been repaired or restored, it is no longer considered an antique. A heavily rebuilt Victorian ring may be a lovely object and still not an antique in the only legal sense that has a number attached to it.

Vintage Has No Authority Behind It

You will see vintage defined confidently as 20 years old, or 30, or 50, or "50 to 100". None of those numbers traces to a government body, an assay office, a museum or a trade association. We went looking specifically for a source and found only dealer blogs, which disagree with each other.

So treat vintage as trade convention rather than a specification. It is a useful word for describing a look, and it is a meaningless word for establishing an age. If a seller uses it and the price reflects genuine age, ask what evidence supports the date. In the United States the only rule that bites is the general one: 16 CFR 23.1 makes it deceptive to misrepresent the type, kind, grade, quality, character, origin, price or value of a piece, or any other material aspect. A false age claim falls under that. There is simply no clause that says vintage means a specific number of years.

Dating a Piece by Period

Style periods are more useful than the three loose words, provided you anchor them to something checkable. Reign dates are the firmest anchors available. Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901 and died on 22 January 1901; Edward VII reigned from 1901 to 1910. Victorian and Edwardian jewellery take their names directly from those spans.

Art Nouveau the V&A dates from the early 1890s to the First World War, without a hard closing year. Art Deco the museum places loosely across the 1920s and 1930s, and notes that the term itself was coined in the 1960s, long after the objects were made. That is worth remembering when a tag states an Art Deco date to the year: nobody making the piece used the label.

Georgian is the period where you should be most sceptical of tight ranges, because the end date is genuinely contested. George IV died in 1830 and William IV in 1837, so sources disagree about where Georgian stops and Victorian begins, and a confident single year is a sign the seller is repeating a dealer blog rather than reading the object.

Hallmarks Are the Real Evidence

If a piece carries a British hallmark, you have something far better than a style opinion. The Goldsmiths' Company Assay Office in London explains that the date letter changes annually on 1 January, and that the font, case and shield shape all change so each can only indicate one specific year. That gives an exact year of assay, not an estimate.

The catch is that the date letter is not compulsory. The Assay Office lists the sponsor's mark, the millesimal fineness mark and the assay office mark as the compulsory ones, with the date letter as an optional extra. Plenty of legitimately old pieces carry no date letter, and plenty of jewellery was never hallmarked at all.

In Canada the system is different again, and lighter. The Competition Bureau states that it is not mandatory to apply a quality mark to items made of precious metals, but that any mark applied must be truthful and applied as the legislation prescribes, and must include a Canadian trademark unless the item was hallmarked under UK law or accurately quality marked under another country's law. An unmarked piece in Canada is normal, not suspicious. A marked piece with no accompanying trademark is worth a question.

What to Check Before You Buy

• Ask what the age claim rests on. A hallmark, a documented provenance and a maker's mark are evidence. "It looks Deco" is an opinion.
• Ask how much has been replaced. New shanks, replaced stones and re-cut settings are common and change both value and, under CBP's rule, antique status.
• Have it appraised independently. Our breakdown of what a jewellery appraisal costs covers what you are paying for.
• Check the stones separately. Older cuts were made by eye and by different standards. Our page on diamonds explains what changed.
• Budget for restoration. Worn claws and thin shanks on genuinely old pieces are the rule. See the warning signs.

Pieces From the Shop

We buy, sell and rebuild older jewellery at our Coquitlam bench. These are current pieces from our fine jewellery range.

Key Takeaways

• The FTC Jewelry Guides define none of the three words and set no age threshold. We checked the full regulation text.
• Estate means previously owned. It makes no claim about age.
• The 100-year antique rule is US Customs tariff law, not jewellery law, and it excludes loose pearls and gemstones.
• Vintage has no authoritative definition. Treat any specific year count as trade convention.
• A British hallmark date letter gives an exact year, but it was never compulsory.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• US Government Publishing Office, official text of 16 CFR Part 23, FTC Jewelry Guides
• US Customs and Border Protection, "Works of Art, Collector's Pieces, Antiques, and Other Cultural Property"
• The Goldsmiths' Company Assay Office, "What is a Hallmark?"
• Competition Bureau Canada, "Precious metals marking"
• Victoria and Albert Museum, "An introduction to Art Deco"
• Victoria and Albert Museum, "Art Nouveau"
• The Royal Family, "Victoria (r. 1837-1901)"

Regulatory text retrieved August 2026. If something here is out of date by the time you're reading it, let us know, we keep our guides current as the trade changes.

Visit Vanhess

We look at older jewellery every week at our Coquitlam bench, and we will tell you what a piece is, what has been replaced, and what it needs. Bring it in, see our repair and restoration service, or call (604) 653-6449.