Vintage sellers on Etsy start social media campaign -- as always, shoppers beware!

Vintage listings are a small portion of the millions of active listings on Etsy:  just 17.5 percent.  This includes all the listings where the seller backdated an item for promotional visibility ("vintage handmade") and supplies listed as "vintage supply" whether or not the item is 20 years old.  Also included are millions of brand new items deceptively listed as "vintage" because that is the safest way to resell new products on Etsy.  I would guess that about 40 percent of all items listed as vintage, aren't.  And maybe half of all Etsy shops selling items listed as "vintage" are intentionally deceptive sellers.

More than 3 million items on Etsy are listed in two or three categories. as

• handmade supply
• vintage supply
• vintage handmade
• vintage handmade supply

If 1 million of the multi-category listings involve "vintage" -- even though they are actually not 20+ years old -- subtracting those 1 million items from the current Vintage listings count reduces the percentage of Vintage listings on Etsy to just 15 percent of all items listed.  If 40 percent of those are actually newer than 20 years old, authentic Vintage items listed on Etsy could be less than 10 percent of all items listed!  

This is just my guesstimate.  I have no way to know for certain how many listings on Etsy sell authentic Vintage items.  For comparison, when Etsy had an actual Vintage Category -- and before the listing process allowed deceptive sellers to claim their craft projects were "vintage handmade" -- Vintage listings on the site made up between 24 and 27 percent of the total active listings on the site, depending on the day.  At that point in time, Marketplace Integrity still removed listings for items less than 20 years old if they were reported with documenting links -- something that rarely happens now.  

Read the Forums thread Etsy Sells Vintage - Social Media Campaign  Will post links to non-vintage sellers being promoted by mendacious Etsygirls as they appear on various sites.