Interesting question...

For cars in the USA, it is 25 years old. For furniture, it is 100 (to be considered "antique " anyway)

I think 60's and 70's drums are considered vintage easily. 80's drums gets a bit foggy but those are 30 years old or so now... I guess 35 years old is a good rule of thumb?

Now the next question is "valuable" because everyone wants to get rich quick on their next dumpster dive. Do it for the love not the money.

I consider drums that were manufactured pre 1980 to be vintage, but there are many rare and collectible drums from all eras.

Oh boy, here we go again.......:):)

Well curious myself, useful search results below. Quick take away is, a borrowed term from wine making no real time period.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vintage

http://www.yourdictionary.com/vintage

Creighton

It seems to me that anything pre-20s is antique, 20s through 70s is vintage, and 80s on is modern. The eras to me are divided by manufacturing approaches, and thus don't change with time; it's hard for me to imagine 80s drums ever "feeling" "vintage" to me. Standardized drum construction didn't seem to happen until the 20s. In that era through part of the 70s, drums were still thin and hardware was relatively light. After that, hardware became pretty massive, shells were thicker and there was less emphasis on graceful aesthetics, for lack of a better term. Those are the divisions in my mind, at least.

In contemporary times starting around the turn of the century, it seems you can find just about anything. We're in a golden age of choice, quality and value.

If you go to Percussion in eBay you find a category under there entitled

Vintage, Pre-1980

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Vintage-Pre1980-/119014/i.html

so that's what they decided a useful cutoff year might be for percussion instruments.

Not all sellers use it. But eBay is somewhat large and hard to argue with...and they seldom answer emails if you want to propose a different year. ;)