For most of a decade, a certain percentage of Etsy's handmade sellers have chosen to list their newly crafted items as "vintage". Often with hilarious results, some products are fake dated back literally centuries before the shop owner was born. However, most Craftiques (Craft misrepresented as Antiques) are simply backdated the minimum 20 year period necessary to (mis)qualify them as "vintage" on mendacious Etsy.
Just for giggles, I am going to be featuring some of these sellers, and their Craftiques, here. It's way past time for the professional Vintage and Antiques sellers on Etsy to realize the level of mendacity on the site can't be reduced by sellers choosing simply to look the other way, and pretend their handmade counterparts are just mistaken or confused. It's deliberate, Etsygirls, and the crafters are redefining the professional standards of your business for you...while you wring your useless hands on the sidelines and titter about how reporting these fauxtiques to Marketplace Integrity would be "bad karma". At this point, anyone with a Vintage shop on Etsy is stating their acceptance of their peers defrauding shoppers looking for authentically old items on the site. I first became interested in Vintage and Antiques in the early 1990s, and I can still remember visiting shows, shops, and auctions while being often clueless about the age of anything on display. It's easy to say Caveat Emptor -- that buyers are wholly responsible if they are ripped off. I feel differently.
Let the call outs begin!
Let's meet Etsy seller aVintageParcel a shop that includes mainly new vintage style supplies and handmade items properly listed for what the items actually are. However, this is one of the sellers on Etsy who likes to fake date a few of their handmade products so that they appear in searches limited to only Vintage items. This is no accident, but something contrived during the listing process. It's false advertising, pure and simple, and because new products like these are available in large quantities (as opposed to most older items that are listed as one offs) they are ranked as more relevant than authentically old pieces. Like this "Custom hand punched round brass tag" pretending to be "Vintage from before 2000". This is, of course, a blatant lie. How can a "custom" crafted item be 20+ years old? Outside of the mendacious Etsyverse, it can't. The listing includes a drop down to select your choice of 3 tag sizes, adding an optional hanging ring or not, and a box to enter your personalization. Over 860 units in stock as I type. Fake. Fake. Fake.
Another Etsy shop dedicated to increasing the carbon footprint of mass manufactured items is rusticathart. Her listing for a set of made to order picture frames is listed as both "Vintage" and "Handmade". Only in the mendacious Etsyverse can an item not crafted until you order be 20+ years old at the same time! Starting at $45, this lying sack will shabby up a set of frames to the buyer's specs. Her item description says she specializes in re-making "antique frames", which will of course bring boundless joy (not!) to the discriminating collector of the authentically old. Not vintage, after she gets done with it.
On Etsy nothing says an item is "Vintage from the 1980s" like a craftique printed with the year 2020! Check out this custom printed tee shirt for a birthday during the 2020 quarantine listed by mendacious seller fromlovelynature It's double-dip listed as both "Vintage from the 1980s" and "Handmade" -- a sure sign the seller is lying about the "vintage" part.
Will add more craftiques as they appear on the most relevant Etsy Vintage listing pages.
