Front Cover Vs Back Cover

[JohnBull]

How important do you consider the back cover to be in relation to the front cover when grading a book (percentile wise) ?

 

Let's say I have 2 copies of a book both slabbed in 10.0. The page quality and QP of the books is identical. I crack the slabs and proceed to draw a big 2" X with a black felt marker on the front cover of one book and the back cover of the other. How does each issue grade ?

 

I'm genuinely interested here and I'll be honest, in 30 years of collecting I've usually given very little attention to the backs of books. What's the consensus ?

[OldGuy]

Both grade 10.0 with a Qualified lable.

[Mephisto]

How important do you consider the back cover to be in relation to the front cover when grading a book (percentile wise) ?

 

Let's say I have 2 copies of a book both slabbed in 10.0. The page quality and QP of the books is identical. I crack the slabs and proceed to draw a big 2" X with a black felt marker on the front cover of one book and the back cover of the other. How does each issue grade ?

 

I'm genuinely interested here and I'll be honest, in 30 years of collecting I've usually given very little attention to the backs of books. What's the consensus ?

 

10.0 Universal because unless it's an autograph of someone that can't be proved CGC doesn't seem to take off or give a Qualified grade. They will just think it's some kind of store marking.

Grading wise they should probably be the same. If you can come up for a penilization number for each mark.

Personally though I would be inclined to pay more for the one on the back than the front. It is distracting to the art and more often than not a back cover has some stupid ads. However, I would rather not get either copy.

What would make it worse is if the marker bleeds through the covers.

[fantastic_four]

I asked this question on the forum so long ago now it has "fallen off the end of the board." When I asked it, I asked for a percentage for front, interior, and back. As you would expect, the majority of people put the most weight on the front cover, but people seem to be rather divided about weighing the interior versus the back; some people weighed the interior more and some people weighed the back more. Overstreet has never been clear how much the interior should count versus the exterior aside from the fact that the guidelines say that missing interior pieces results in an automatic downgrade to the lower grades.

 

My feeling is front cover 50%, interior 30%, and back cover 20%; I'm uncertain what the percentages should be but I do believe the back cover should count for the least. The back cover is important, but not nearly as important as the front or integrity of the interior...it's quite easy to experience a comic without ever looking at the back cover. When you consider the two major functions of a comic book--reading and display--the back is almost always not a part of reading and is a comparatively minor part of display.

[sfilosa]

Good question.

 

The hard part for me is grading an interior that has few chips in the pages (at the corners). Sometimes it's because of brittle pages, but other times a small chip might have come off the back plus a few pages.

 

What would you grade a book with a extremely small chip off the back (and no other defects)?

 

Same book, but now four interior pages are also chipped?

 

Tough call.

 

[JohnBull]

I asked this question on the forum so long ago now it has "fallen off the end of the board." When I asked it, I asked for a percentage for front, interior, and back. As you would expect, the majority of people put the most weight on the front cover, but people seem to be rather divided about weighing the interior versus the back; some people weighed the interior more and some people weighed the back more. Overstreet has never been clear how much the interior should count versus the exterior aside from the fact that the guidelines say that missing interior pieces results in an automatic downgrade to the lower grades.

 

My feeling is front cover 50%, interior 30%, and back cover 20%; I'm uncertain what the percentages should be but I do believe the back cover should count for the least. The back cover is important, but not nearly as important as the front or integrity of the interior...it's quite easy to experience a comic without ever looking at the back cover. When you consider the two major functions of a comic book--reading and display--the back is almost always not a part of reading and is a comparatively minor part of display.

 

Thanks, that was the sort of answer I was interested in. Obviously a black marker was a bad example because of the qualified grade. Let's say I took my first 10.0 and messed up the front - folds, creases, general wear, whatever - and took it down to say a 7.0. If I did exactly the same to the back of the other 10.0, does it a) still get the qualified grade, b) grade at 7.0 or c) come out somewhere in the middle ? Any idea of CGC's line.

 

50% for the front cover seems a bit low to me as this is the immediate impact area of the comic. Interior is important, but I tend to think of this more in good/bad terms. Browning pages are a definite no no to me, but before the advent of slabbed books, I couldn't really care whether the pages were white, off-white or slightly creamy. Suppleness was important, but more from the practical terms of not wanting to see bits break off. I'm not sure what percentage of issues acually had white pages by the time they had made there way over to England, having been transported over as ballast by boat. I suspect the general page colour was off-white at best, which might actually go some way towards explaining the general dislike of these copies in the US.

[THE_BEYONDER]

"fallen off the end of the board."

 

I hate when that happens.....

[fantastic_four]

bump

[divad]

How important do you consider the back cover to be in relation to the front cover when grading a book (percentile wise) ?

 

Let's say I have 2 copies of a book both slabbed in 10.0. The page quality and QP of the books is identical. I crack the slabs and proceed to draw a big 2" X with a black felt marker on the front cover of one book and the back cover of the other. How does each issue grade ?

 

I'm genuinely interested here and I'll be honest, in 30 years of collecting I've usually given very little attention to the backs of books. What's the consensus ?

 

Both books become POS's

[fantastic_four]

Let's say I took my first 10.0 and messed up the front - folds, creases, general wear, whatever - and took it down to say a 7.0. If I did exactly the same to the back of the other 10.0, does it a) still get the qualified grade, b) grade at 7.0 or c) come out somewhere in the middle ? Any idea of CGC's line.

 

Based upon my analysis and attempts to reverse-engineer CGC's grading, I'd say it would grade somewhere in the middle, perhaps in the 8.0 to 8.5 range.

 

 

50% for the front cover seems a bit low to me as this is the immediate impact area of the comic. Interior is important, but I tend to think of this more in good/bad terms. Browning pages are a definite no no to me, but before the advent of slabbed books, I couldn't really care whether the pages were white, off-white or slightly creamy. Suppleness was important, but more from the practical terms of not wanting to see bits break off. I'm not sure what percentage of issues acually had white pages by the time they had made there way over to England, having been transported over as ballast by boat. I suspect the general page colour was off-white at best, which might actually go some way towards explaining the general dislike of these copies in the US.

 

I definitely agree with one general point you're making--the criteria used to grade the interior should be different from that used to grade the exterior. The function of the interior is entirely different from that of the exterior; you primarily read the story, but you primarily stare at the cover for longer periods of time than you would interior panels. In line with those different functions of exterior versus interior, I believe the primary defect criteria for the interior should be to downgrade for those which impact readability.

 

An example of this is that a corner crease, or even a minor tear, located in the margins outside the panels shouldn't be downgraded for at ALL below the 9.9/10.0 level, but something like a large ink splotch which obscures the art and/or word bubbles SHOULD be downgraded for. Another example is that a single folded-over interior page, or almost ANY interior crease, should have very little impact on overall grade because it barely impacts your ability to read the comic. It's fairly easy to fold the crease back over, and they typically have little or no effect on the read or appreciation of the art.

 

To summarize, the cover should be graded for based upon aesthetic defect criteria, whereas the interior should be graded for based upon functional defect criteria.