World Globe Universe has prepared this resource to assist you in learning about the age of your globe. Since this chart is drawn from many sources and is not specific to any particular globe manufacturer, the user should understand that the age determination of your globe will be only an approximation.

Note: The following information is presented for the use of our customers and is in no way intended to take the place of securing assistance from a competent professional with experience in World Globes, such as Omniterrum, Murray Hudson or the George Glazer Gallery.

The difficulties in determining a precise age for your globe come from many different variables. While the dates for most political changes can be precisely determined, the time lag for a given manufacturer to implement the change into their product lineup is less easy to determine.

Factors that come into play include:

• How often did the manufacturer print new map gores?
  To some extent this would have been determined by the stock of gores on hand as well as by the magnitude of political changes that were taking place.
  
  If a manufacturer had the financial resources to print large quantities of map gores, they would have done so in order to achieve the best economy of scale. This would have allowed them to be more competitive in the marketplace but would have also increased the size of their map gore inventory. The number of map gores in stock would have weighed heavily on their decision as to how quickly they were willing to print new map gores to incorporate a given political change.
  
  The greater the impact of the political change the more incentive there would have been to implement the change and reprint new map gores in spite of any inventory still on the shelf.
  
  
• How long did it take for existing inventory to move through the distribution pipeline before newly updated globes reached the consumer?
  There are two primary elements in this factor and they would have varied to some extent from manufacturer to manufacturer. The larger the market share for a given manufacturer, the greater the volume of globes would have been as well as the resulting increase in the number of completed globes in the distribution pipeline.
  
  • How much completed inventory did the manufacturer have on the shelf?
    If a manufacturer had already built a globe, there is very little chance that they would have shipped products with updated map gores until the older products had sold out.
    
  • How much inventory did retail merchants have on hand?
    This is the other end of the distribution pipeline. If a retailer had a dozen globes on his shelves it would have taken much longer to sell off his current inventory and order in newly updated globes than if they only had one or two globes on their shelves. Most retailers would have had to sell their old inventory before they could afford to order in new stock.

With all of these considerations in mind it is clear to see that not only the year of manufacture, but especially the year of sale can be determined only as a range, rather than as a precise date.

We are confident that you can use the following chart to identify the general age of your World Globe. However, if you require a more precise age estimate, you should contact a professional antique appraiser who has experience and expertise in the area of dating World Globes.

When you find an "Old" political name on the globe instead of a "New" political name, you have confirmed the approximate age of your globe. (Be aware that some political changes have taken place more than once, so any change must take into consideration all other political conditions present on the globe.)