Vintage, not Estate

Special Definitions:

• Vintage: Our definition of vintage is any pre-owned jewelry item that we sell.
• Antique: Usually means 100 years old but this definition has changed over time and has different meanings. We use it to mean old as in pre-WWII (which started in 1940 for the USA).

We have been using the term “estate jewelry” to describe the used jewelry that we sell. “Vintage” is a better word to use to describe jewelry. “Estate” is an industry term, and the average person doesn’t use it in the same way. “Estate” sounds like someone died, and it just doesn’t have the cachet of “vintage.”

From now on, we are going to promote our estate jewelry as vintage or antique, according to which category the item belongs. This applies to both internal and external promotion, including descriptions for newsletters, on our website, in ads, on our inventory tags, in the descriptions in Inventory module in BusinessMind, and when speaking to the customer. Additionally, if the item is from a specific period, like Art Deco, Edwardian, etc., that should always be noted as well.

We also use the term “preowned” to describe our used watches. We will still use this term when describing modern used watches. For non-modern watches, we will use “vintage” to describe them in the same format as above.

Using these terms will add romance and intrigue to our vintage and antique jewelry, which should help us sell more!