Mokiguy

That's very good idea. Since I am doing my own grading, bagging, boarding and cataloging for my own satisfaction and not to resell, at least not for now, maybe never .......... Having that additional grade with the notation on those books would serve me well if things changed and I ever did want to sell them in the future.

Thanks, that's a very good and interesting answer to my question, but unfortunately now creates another question. What would the grade have been sans the detached centerfold? 9.0, 9.2, 9.6, 9.8 ......? How much did the detached centerfold actually lower the grade? Perhaps my original question will not be so easily answered. As you said "a comic near perfect" seems to have lowered 5 or more grades. Obviously though there was enough room starting out at 9.0 and above. But what about a comic that would grade say 6.0 without a detached centerfold. Do you think that there would be the same 5 or more grade reduction?

Yes, I understand that, but I only collect raw books for my own satisfaction, and like to grade them myself, so obviously I wouldn't give myself a "qualified" label. But what I was wondering is what the CGC guide says about loose or detached centerfolds, or do they only address it the same way you mentioned and don't really clarify it for a home grader/collector.

I don't have the new CGC grading guide but have gotten fairly good at grading my own comics through other learning sources. But there are a few areas where I am not so sure of myself, and the centerfold is one of them. The Overstreet guide has the grade for a comic with a centerfold loose or detached only as high as 2.5 regardless of any other comic condition. At 3.0 to 4.5 it may only be detached at one staple, and at 5.0 and above it may be loose or slightly loose up to 6.5, but not detached. So my question is ...... is the CGC guide as firm on the centerfold grades as the Overstreet guide, or is there wiggle room depending on the condition of the rest of the comic? Thanks ........

When I first started this thread, I really was only making an observation about how I thought it strange that part of a comics TPG grade is locked away, never to be seen again, unless one chooses to destroy the TPG grade by opening the sealed case. I never meant for this thread to go anywhere but there, but it has, and that's OK. But I'm going to share a final thought on my posts original intent. I still cannot think of a single item other than comics or magazines that are graded, appraised or judged, and then sealed after that grading, appraising or judging, and so part of that grade, appraisal or judgement can no longer be seen in order to either agreeing or disagreeing with that grade, appraisal or judgement. The Morgan and Peace dollars I collect ....... you can see every part of a TPG grade and decide if you think it accurate, low or high. Paintings, old cars, pottery, virtually every antique item, stamps, paper currency, old firearms, or a thousand other items are either never sealed or sealed but all parts graded are visible so anyone can see everything taken into account to arrive at that grade or appraisal. That's all I meant and the entire point of my original post. I don't have the answer, and most likely there is no answer and the only possible way that a TPG can stand behind their grade is to do exactly what they do. But I just found it strange or interesting or just different that comics and magazines are alone in this distinction.

Wow, how profound ...... I'm in awe!

I don't understand your comment, perhaps you could explain it better to novice like me. I thought I was making the point that a comic once it is slabbed it does in fact become a two dimensional object. How is a coin any different than a comic then? If you are not counting the edge of a coin why but count the edge of a slabbed comic?

No I'm not assuming that at all, but the whole point of my post was that the inside becomes totally irrelevant once it's slabbed. If you open it then it is no longer slabbed or technically graded, since no TPG will stand behind a grade once the slab has been opened.

You can't read and enjoy the inside of a comic either once it's slabbed ........ that was the whole point of my post.

But verifying authenticity is different that caring what's inside a coin. Of course we all want to know if what we collect is genuine. I still own 6 fake Chinese Morgans that I purchased from 6 different sellers early on in my silver dollar collecting. I don't consider them as part of my collection, just an oddity. But I don't care what's on the inside of them anymore than I care what's on the inside of a genuine Morgan or Peace dollar, I only care that's it's genuine. The silver content is irrelevant as far as numismatic value. Once a silver dollar is determined to be genuine, a silver dollar is graded on it's exterior only. If it's not genuine it's not it won't be graded. Perhaps my analogy of blank pages sent you off in the wrong direction. I should have said tears or staining or coupon cutouts or whatever shouldn't matter anymore than weight tolerances of a Morgan dollar don't matter. A brand new Morgan when minted should weigh 26.73 grams, plus or minus almost one gram. An older worn Morgan can weigh as much as two grams or even three grams less depending on how worn, and yet none new or old is graded on it's weight or silver content, only the obverse and reverse ...... what's visible once it's determined to be genuine. Perhaps a coins weight is a closer analogy to inside condition of a comic than blank pages.

I'm still fairly new to the whole comic collecting thing, but just now as I was going through a book page by page in order to assign it a grade (for my own database), looking for completeness and soiling, coupon cutouts, page color or tears or any other interior defect, it dawned on me how silly it all seemed. I don't collect slabbed comics and have no intention of getting this one slabbed and graded, but couldn't help but think and wonder why anything other than the front and back cover mattered. Once a comic is double sealed in a holder, no one will ever see the inside again. You could fill it with 32 blank sheets of paper and nobody would ever know. And yet a book with missing pages or coupons that have been cut out or even a detached centerfold or some large tears can take a book from valuable to chump change. Before I started collecting comics I collected (and still do) Morgan and Peace Silver Dollars. They are also third party graded, but nobody cares what is on the inside of a coin, and all you see in a slab is the obverse and reverse,and that's all it's graded on. Sports cards, Stamps, paper currency, autographs ....... all these things are graded solely on what you can see, only comics and magazines are graded on things you will never see once encapsulated. As the headline says, that was just my thought this morning, perhaps a silly or novice thought, and I hope you don't think it too foolish of me for sharing.

Well since there is no silver age ending date consensus, I'm going with 73 for Marvel and 74 for DC. That seems to be a middle ground, not the earliest like 69, and lot the latest like 75.

Just looked this up on line before I started typing this out ................. The encyclopedia Britannica article says 1956 to 1969. Wikipedia says 1956 to 1970 Biowars says 1956 until the “early” 70’s and Bronze age beginning in 1973 Cosmic comics says 1956 to 1975 MileHigh Comics says 1956 to 1975 with Bronze age beginning in 1976 Looks like a consensus on when it started but when did it end ..... when is a silver age comic a silver age comic book?

I don't know what telltale signs of dry cleaning look like, so I take your word for it ....... but if it was it wasn't me.

This one has me stumped. Overall it's pretty clean for a 50 year old book. But there is one area at the top edge and I can't tell if it's water damage or printer ink. I've seen other books where it's actually into the pages, but this is almost strictly on the edge with just a hint of bleed on the front and back and so little on interior pages it cant be seen with the naked eye. It's not mold either. Definitely has the appearance to me of ink, and I read in another post here at CGC that printer ink is not a downgrade. So looking for grade and opinions, thanks. And that little chip on the front cover is the only chip or tear on the entire book. Bottom right corner ding.

Look, I really do appreciate you and everyone else that is trying to help ....... and I think many of the ideas mentioned including yours have a lot of comic book collecting wisdom to them. I just thought your 25% was on the low side. And it has absolutely nothing to do with what will make me happy. If I was looking to be happy, I would never have asked and started this thread in the first place. Heck, I could have just used the highest price guide I could find like ComicBookRealm, put those numbers into my data base and patted myself on the back with every comic I bought. I may be new to comic collecting, but I am not new to collecting. For years I have been collecting Morgan and Peace silver dollars, and since I also mostly bought raw coins, I had the same questions when I first began that endeavor as well. I got quite good at grading and buying at very good prices, and only because I knew what a "good" price for a certain coin in a certain condition ought to sell for, and so always bid and bought for less or let the specimen go. That's all I'm trying to do here. You Mentioned Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane. Over at the buy part of this site, some member said he was cleaning out his collection and was selling a lot if not all his Jimmy Olsens. And I was looking at what he was asking as well as what many of his books already sold for, and they are mostly 25% to about 50% below the Overstreet value. As I said, I'm only trying to learn and only trying to be as close to FMV as I can be, nothing more, and so perhaps your 25% of Overstreet is a little overkill and maybe 50% is closer. And as to the part when you said that perhaps these books were bought by one buyer and so maybe $8 shipping wasn't what was actually spent. Perhaps, but you don't know and neither do I, and again that's why I'm trying to figure this all out. I do the same. Only yesterday I bought 45 books from one seller, and my shipping amounted to 33cents a book. I get that, but that was what I did, what others may or may not have done is no more than speculation.

No, don't think I was "tilting at nor chasing after windmills", as a matter of fact I thought I had explained that I understood that the idea of any single price not being a be all see all end all value in my original post. Apparently I didn't explain it very well. By me using four different value guides, adding them together, dividing the total and then taking the average, I thought showed I understood the concept of no single price or value explaining true worth. Remember my question was, of the four price guides were Comicbookrealm and Overstreet to high and skewing the average. Now with your 25% of Overstreet estimate, you have taken it to another level entirely and made most DC low to mid range books nearly worthless. I went back and looked in detail in order to estimate the grade of each of those three Adventure Comics I pictured in my last comment, and all three look to be 3.0 to 5.0 grades, and Overstreet has those books at around $8 to $14 for those grades, which is about what the buyers paid for them, their all in cost including shipping. So if I understand the concept correctly, the value of an item is what people are willing to pay ..... what it sells at not what somebody asks for an item. So if buyers are willing to pay $12 to receive a comic in the mail, then the value of that comic is about $12 whether they paid $1 for the comic and $11 shipping, or they paid $12 for the comic with free shipping. And of course that needs to be more than one sale, an average or median over many sales. At least that's how I see it. So perhaps the real value is the total paid including shipping, and that seems closer to my average value in my database than your 25% of Overstreet. Actually your 25% of the Overstreet guide seem a tad low. Granted, I'm still fairly new to the hobby, but I don't know of any places selling 55 year old silver age DC's for $2 or $3, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I may be old in years but I'm new to this hobby, and I haven't gone to or been in any brick and mortar comic book shops in my entire life, and every thing I think I know is what I have seen from the vantage point of my Youtube connection and my keyboard, window to the internet.

The trouble I find with using eBay sold listings on lower price books is the shipping. On a more expensive book where you might be paying $30, $50, $100 or more, then a shipping charge of $5 to $10, though it certainly adds to your overall cost, it still might only be 10% to 20%, and the more expensive the book, the less shipping becomes a major cost. But when your paying a small amount for a book, say $3 to $10, then a $6 to $10 shipping cost is ridiculous to say the least, and when I figure my all in cost of a book, and therefore try and establish a value, it's difficult determining a true value from eBay sold listings. So then are the eBay sold listings a true indication of a books value with or without the shipping, because if sold listings are supposed to represent what buyers are willing to pay and therefore the actual "market" value, would it be the same without shipping or more or less? The picture of three eBay listings that just sold last week are prime examples of what I mean. What is the value of the first book, $3 or $11, the second $5 or $13 or somewhere in between? That's the problem with sold listings on relatively inexpensive books.

Those are good points, but establishing value at the time I buy them is more important to me than if I have all my values correct as time goes by. Comics if bought correctly and at low prices initially, should mostly go up. If I was buying moderately expensive or even very expensive key comics, I would be more concerned with all my numbers being accurate some time down the road, but at my prices, I'm more concerned with what I spent on a book today and did I get it at a bargain price or not.

I've tried that, but for both raw and fairly low priced books, the sold prices are all over the price on very similar looking copies. Two copies look to both be about a 5 and one sells for $6 and the other for $35 ....... what can you deduce from that? I think for higher priced books, checking eBay sold listings is wise, but I can't see much value to that in the price range and grade I'm buying.

Before I get into this too far, let me say that maybe a really long intro to the question I have is more than some of you can stomach at one sitting. But I’m sort of new here and thought that I would tell you a little about me and what I do, and perhaps the question will make more sense. If it’s too much for you, well then you can just ignore this post and move along to a shorter sound bite and just pretend you never saw this. My question is about values, but now that I said that, I also need to say that at this time in my life, I'm not trying to sell any comics. Maybe I never will and I’ll just die with them and my heirs can deal with it, but mainly because that's not why I have been buying and collecting comics in the first place. I have started collecting what I think of as rather inexpensive comics, all raw and really have no intention of ever getting any graded. I am no kid, rather I'm retired and thought it would be fun to relive some of the comics I read when I was just a boy, some 60 years ago ........ and they were almost exclusively DC Super Hero comics, i.e. Superman/Boy, Aquaman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Action/Adventure comics, World’s Finest, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, The Flash and all the rest ...... you most likely know the group. I try to avoid buying "readers" though you’ll see in the picture I’m posting along with this is that it looks like I have, but those “2’s” surprised me because they looked really good cover wise but had some hidden defect like a story coupon cut out or a missing page or un-noticed major tear or spine split, stuff like that and that’s why they got a 2 or 2.5 from me. But I don't shy away from lower grade books. Most I have bought over the past year or two range between (according to my grading abilities anyway), 3 Very Good to 7.5 Very Fine -, with a few as high as possibly 9.0 and unfortunately a few as low as 2.0. Almost all bought at eBay, and pictures and descriptions at eBay being what they are, I sometimes wound up with a few nice surprises ,and a few disappointments at other times. But with all that said, of all my nearly 300 comics I've bought so far, all are silver age, mostly 12 cent books with a few 10 cent copies, a few 15 cent books and a very few 20 cent books (less than 10 from the tail end of the silver age era), and I've bought most of these books in lots to amortize the shipping costs across many books. I paid between $2 to $7 and that included the amortized shipping. Looking at my database I see only 4 books that exceeded single digits and the highest being $20.16. Now to my question. I suppose I'm some sort of an anal retentive nut, but I really enjoy bagging, boarding, grading, establishing a value, and entering all that into my Database that I made in Excel. I get some sort of satisfaction out of all that organization. For the included picture, I just took a little section, about a dozen books to show what I do. On each line in my Database is one comic and four columns with four different grading sources. The next column after that I average out the four estimated values, and then the final column is what I spent for each comic. That’s the cost of the book as well as the shipping to arrive at my all in total cost. OK, I didn’t include the 15 cents for bag and board. I do all this because I want a check against my spending, and doing all this allows me to see. Am I buying at a bargain price, just average but fair, or have I paid too much. Well I don’t want to be overly optimistic and so estimating true values is important to me, whether I ever decide to sell any or not is really beside the point. I’ve noticed that Comicbookrealm is always high, followed by Overstreet. So for these raw rather inexpensive comics, would I be better off not even lookat their suggested values and just average between Comics Price Guide and Nostomania? I suppose I’m looking for real world un biased values if I had to or wanted to sell them today (though I don’t intend to probably ever). Well that’s my question and any of you that are still alive or awake, I sure would like to hear what you have to say about my question establishing a raw value. Thanks in advance. P.S The blank line Lois Lane 79 I own but haven't added yet other than what I paid.

This is the first time I've posted in this forum, so if I screwed up the size or type of pictures that will work here, I apologize. There is a water stain both on the front lower right, barely visible on cover but can be seen on inside cover. Also back lower left and that is more visible. A few of the pages inside have very faint damage, you really have to look hard to see it on most. Everything is tight, no spine splits, cutouts or tears. Staples and all pages well attached. It's a nice 60 year old silver age book other than that stain. So folks, what's the grade?

I will do that, about taking good pictures of books I've graded and presenting them at the buddy can you spare a grade forum. Thanks for the idea. Somebody else mentioned that early on in this thread but I didn't think it answered my questions so I glazed over it at that time. So thanks to you as well.

OK, I wasn't trying to be the "Oh Yea, I'll just one up you then sort of guy ....... I just meant that the words are there and and I see little difference between subtle and minor, or moderate and negligible. All those words are open to interpretation. Nowhere in any grading guide or grading tool have I seen it clearly stated that two 1/8" tics limit the grade to this. or 6 1/4" tics limit it to that. I get it that you can describe a tear or a crease in millimeters, but soiling or spine roll or sun shadow or stress marks or a number of other things are all open to interpretation. It would seem, and I'm speaking as a novice, that most things could be quantified if the powers that be wanted to, but then would would be the need for TPG services. Perhaps the meanings will make more sense as one grows in grading skills. I think I'm not too bad already, but it's those fuzzy areas that can't be counted in millimeters or in amounts that are problematic.

Well I think you may just have overlooked some of these words, but they are there and just how do you quantify some of them? For instance right here at the CGC grading scale guide for a 9.8 it says .......... "A nearly perfect collectible with negligible handling or manufacturing defects". Out of the Overstreet grading guide 6th edition 2021 for a 9.6 it says ...... "BINDERY DEFECTS - Only subtle bindery or printing defects are allowed. In the Nostomania grading guide it says under sections for the grades 9.9, 9.8, and 9.6 that only "subtle" bindery or printing flaws are allowed. And as I'm typing this I can't remember where minuscule came from, but I saw it in some guide as well. If I remember or find it I'll post that as well. So anyway, those words are there and how can you determine what they mean since each person seems to have a different opinion about what they mean