Mokiguy

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

The biggest problem I have is the terminology that not only these tools use but Overstreet or CGC or other TPG's or some of these other sites you mentioned like Nostomania and others. Words like subtle, or minuscule, or tiny or negligible or moderate. When describing a tear as is negligible, does that mean 1/6th of an inch or 1/8th of an inch or 2 1/16th inch tears. Or are two of those now minuscule or tiny, and then are 3 moderate? It seems that it's so damn subjective because I'm sure that one persons tiny is another persons minuscule. One persons major is another persons moderate etc.

I've considered it, but up to now I have been using the Overstreet guide.

This is only my second post here at the CGC forums, so I'm not even sure if asking this is allowed or adding websites to this post, or if this is the appropriate forum, but I'm sure someone will set me straight if I'm off base on any or all the things I just mentioned. I grade my own comics for my own collection and my own database. Not to sell, though someday I might, but for now I am just enjoying collecting, grading and cataloguing what I have. I'm still fairly new at this and have been trying to hone my grading skills, and searching on line I ran across a few grading tools/sites/programs, and was wondering if any of you are familiar with these, and if you have or are using any of these, what your opinion is comparing one to the other. Do you like one over the other? Do you think one is more accurate than the other? Or do you think any or all grading tools are just a bunch of hooey. Thanks in advance for your input. Here are the three programs I have tried out ...... the first and second appear to be based on the same set of criteria, the third is completely different: https://www.comicbookgradingtool.com/ https://comicbookrealm.com/example-based-grading https://spotongrading.com/

Thank you all that chimed in. The last comment from Marvelmaniac really clarified things with the link to the spine stress video. In it he says that a book woth 10 or 15 spine stress (and those would be small and non color breaking) would put a book down in the 8 or 8.5 ....... exactly what I was looking for.

First of all let me say I am new to this forum, just joined 10 minutes ago. And I have been learning quite a bit about grading from various sources like the OVERSTREET guide and you-tube videos. But there is an area that seems rather fuzzy to me no matter how much I watch and read, and my heading is that area. Two things, what are the differences between stress marks and ticks and spine creases? And the second part of this question is is about the amount. I watched a pretty good video the other day where the guy says that if you can count you can grade. Then he went around the book and counted the defects, 1 for a blunted corner, another for yellowing pages, another for a very small tear etc., and went all around the front and back of the book like this. When he got to the spine he counted a couple of ticks and added more numbers. Then he referenced the OVERSTREET guide as to the allowable number of defects for a grade, I think it was 13 and pronounced it a 5.5. So here's my second question. Hypothetically lets say that a book would be a 10 ....... absolutely perfect without a single defect except for 15 small spine stress marks or creases or ticks. So would this otherwise perfect 10 book become a 5 because of this? Do you count each stress mark as a defect or as one defect? Thanks in advance