It's often very difficult to determine the actual age of vintage percussion stands. For instance, there was a company named Walberg and Auge that produced lots of cymbal, hi hat and snare drum stands, as well as tom holders and other drum hardware items. They made stands that they sold to companies like Gretsch, Slingerland and Ludwig that those companies sold as their own. Here's the problem - if you open up a 70's Gretsch catalog you'll see those stands, and it would be pretty much identical to one you could have bought from Ludwig in 1955. For sure, by today's double braced monster stand standards these stands do look old. But many of them appear on eBay and are described as stands from the 20's, 30's and 40's when in fact they may have been sold in 1980. Other times people will see the patent year stamped on something and think it's the date of manufacture. Of course it isn't, and the Ludwig Drum Co. made bass drum pedals with a 1909 patent stamp on it for many, many years after 1909. That was just when the patent was granted. They could make a pedal today and legally stamp "patended 1909" on it. When in doubt, ask the seller how they determined the actual age. If the answer is that "it looks really old" then probably the age is just being guessed at. The most definite way of actually determining the year is to look at old drum catalogs. These aren't plentiful, but do turn up on eBay now and then. Most people would be shocked to look at 70's drum catalogs. In their 1973 catalog, Slingerland still sold Walberg hi hat stands that lots of people would guess to be from the 1920's. That's over 50 years off!