It's unfortunately a lot of survivor bias, but I like looking at photos of turn of the century items.

> It's unfortunately a lot of survivor bias

In this case, isn't that the selection criteria rather than an interfering bias?

It's both, I think. If the goal is to find high quality items survivor bias can definitely interfere with the results. The items must survive long enough to count as something you can use "for life" and it's possible, even likely, that they only survived due to low use or extraordinary care.