I do not think that means what you think it means: Etsy edition

If you are a denzien of the internet, perhaps you have heard of Etsy.com? The site is a global marketplace sort of thing where people post handmade, vintage, and wholesale crafty things on the internets for people to buy. With a seller account, you can post whatever the hell you want, unlike Amazon.com, freaking amazon, which only lets you post known items, for whatever price you want. You upload your pictures, add a title and description, and wait.
In my case, I type in a search term and spend hours and hours looking at stuff I don't need, and favoriting all of it. You can follow people and see their favorites.Yes, favorite is a verb; I favorited that item, I am favoriting things, I favorite the items that I like.
I got my iphone case, which has a cool owl picture on the back, from a reputable seller with good reviews and feedbacks regarding the style of case I got.

Anyway, where I was going with this is the use of "vintage" by sellers. The beauty of etsy, the ability to post whatever, means that you can call anything "vintage" and get away with it. My main issue is with people who seem to think that items from the 1990s count as "vintage."
This is not exactly true. Vintage (in the sense of items, not wine), according to Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster online, is not actually a thing. I know, right? It just means "from a time" but in popular culture can refer to retro or antique.
Let's start with retro. The officialish websites say that retro is "an outdated style that has returned to fashion". By this definition, I suppose that the 90s could be retro, especially given wikipedia's 15-20 plus year range. Still, I would maintain that the 90s styles went out of fashion for a reason and should not come back, with the possible exception of a few elements of certain sub-styles, such as punk, grunge, and goth. And for me, retro just makes me think of poodle skirts and diners.
If "vintage" means antique, the 90s are way, way too recent. I am not 102 years old, okay? To be an antique by the US customs law, a thing must be 100 years old. In antique shops, the rule is usually 50. The late 90s is only 13 years old or so, so I would maintain that a thing from the mid-nineties would just barely qualify for "retro".
NB: I am also not yet 52.
Another problem with categorizing "vintage" is that it's so widely used and yet undefined by authoritative sources as far as the popular definition goes. I've heard that hipsters like "vintage" everything, so I guess this makes sense. "I liked vintage before it was defined" and all that. It kind of seems like vintage just means "used stuff that's pretty old that isn't produced any more or is indicative of a bygone era." For example: a vintage star trek shirt that was produced for a few seasons of the original series (or, in 20 years, shirts from Doctor Who or Heroes or Lost or any other show playing now), or a vintage phone with a rotary dial (or anymore, a landline), or a vintage poster from when a movie came out 20 years ago, or a hat that you found in a thrift store that you've never seen anywhere else. A vintage bike would be one that was made years ago, although updated models may be made currently. A vintage scarf would be one that you found in your mother or grandmother's closet that she's had since before you were born.
As far as retro goes, I'd like to submit that it implies that high-up people are mass producing and selling an old style again. For instance, Nordstrom and Sears and JC Penny's are selling garments composed of geometric color-blocked knit and woven fabric, such as were worn somewhere between 1960 and 1980 (the Op Art era on this page, there's a picture of it about three quarters of the way down if you click the title). People were mass producing peasant blouses for a few years, which I think would count as retro, although if you could find a vintage peasant blouse, you were a lucky girl. For men, I'd say that fedoras and pea coats/great coats/overcoats can be vintage or even antique but are currently mass produced, making them a retro trend.

So, the conclusion I make is this: it's okay to call some stuff vintage, like my dad's university shirt from 1978-1982 (30+ years old) that I wear all the time because the fitted style looks good on girls nowadays, or the chair that I swiped from the neighbor's front lawn (garish yellow/green/tan floral print with orange accents) that probably came from the 70s or 80s because I sincerely doubt anyone produced items with this color scheme between 1990 and 2005 on purpose; these things are old enough to have belonged to this generation's parents when they were our age (by which late teens to early 30s). Although, I would actually argue that my chair is just garish and not vintage.
This means that the definition of "vintage" is changing all the time. In about 10 years, even I will not be able to complain that the 90s is too recent, and it will fall solidly into the realm of vintage for kids younger than 15 as of today. What I think of as vintage now, at age 22 in 2012, will all too soon become "antique" (if it isn't already; I freely admit that my definition is fuzzy).
The main thing I'm getting at with this whole post is that the 1990s aren't vintage, they're just old and typically out of style. 
Damn kids.