Are old books good for my chess?

I've seen some books, they claim to talk about "modern" chess.

I'm aware that some of them are outdated, such as Nimzowisch's "My System".

(Please note that I'm not criticizing the quality of the book, it's only outdated)

However, I don't know when exactly they started getting worse than actual books for my chess.

Are 1950-1980s books good? Or should I only consider those that came after 2000?

try the Woodpecker book by Axel Smith and Hans Tikkanen

Any (known) chess book after 1950 is good, in my opinion.

I've been wondering the same thing as I have recently bought a bunch because they were sold in a couple of bundles for quite cheap. So I hope you get a few more responses.

I think a good book is a good book, regardless of its age. Chess understanding may have developed but there is still much to learn from an old classic. The Bronstein 1953 Candidates book is often cited as a classic and it remains so in that it explains among other things middle game plans. Likewise the Alekhine, Tal and Keres autobiographical collections are still as brilliant as when they first came out. Great games which are well annotated. Tartakower & DuMont's 500 Master Games of Chess is a fine introduction to openings delivered through classic games. There are many others.  

+1

I strongly agree.  I would add, though, that while chess understanding has evolved, basic principles are timeless. 

Also, chess books, even those written long ago, were written by people at a level of expertise far above most of us. I would never, ever think that a 50-100 year old book has nothing in it I could learn from. 

Old books in my opinion offer a bonus in that the game annotation does not include pages and pages and pages of what is, in my opinion, utterly useless computer-aided annotation.  I don't care what the computer thinks is the best move. I want to know what the human player was thinking when he or she made the move he or she made.

     Old books on openings won't help you much unless you are looking for an out-of-date line that has been abandoned for years because an easy way to equality has been found. It's highly unlikely that club players will have studied this type of thing so you can sometimes put your opponent in a dilemma, struggling to find the best moves in an unfamiliar position while you know what the best strategy is.

     Any book on principles or game collections that were considered to be valuable when they were originally published will still teach you a lot today.

I watched a Youtube interview of a GM who explained how he got stronger by reading one dedicated game collection book for each of the world chess champions starting from Steinitz through Kasparov in the 80s. Doesn’t matter if the game collection book is old as long as it is good. 

Completely correct.

some of my favourite chess books are the ones by Chernev and Fred Reinfeld, those guys knew how to explain chess to amateurs.

I would note that the late John Collins, noted chess teacher and instructor to Bobby Fischer, William Lombardy, and others, had his students do something similar called "The Hundreds".  Starting with Morphy, play through 100 games of each of the world champions in order.  Don't worry about the annotations, just play over the games.  Play over that quantity of games and something is bound to sink in...

Older books can be very useful to the amateur player.  One challenge you may encounter is that many are written in Descriptive Notation.  That notation isn't that hard to learn, but not everyone feels it is worth it.  I have many older books for sale (and more to come). Click this link if you would like to take a look: https://cs1904.com/books/Book_Sale.html   Note that the list is separated between Algebraic and Descriptive Notation.