Overstreet Changes for 2003...

[chromium]

Like a rhinestone cowboy

Getting cards and letters from people I don't even know

And offers coming over the phone (?)

 

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

It would get way too confusing if, in the middle of the numbering for volume 2, we suddenly threw the bunch of them in vol. 1 that carried the old number. Much as I love to forget they ever started again, it's a fact of life. The issues will continue to be listed by their primary number under vol. 2.

[lighthouse]

Lighthouse is the original Rhinestone Cowboy...

 

Yep... that's why I was keeping the Rawhide Kid story to myself... Was hoping they had written the story just for me...

 

Well, and for ricky too...

[lighthouse]

The issues will continue to be listed by their primary number under vol. 2.

 

I think you have to do that... If Marvel suddenly decides to chuck the new numbering altogether then maybe the guides would reflect that. But until then you just have to report the facts...

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

That's right, and the new numbering is still the "official" designation for the series. Those old numbers were a nice touch for those of us who felt they should never have started over again after the return of the heroes from the pocket universe debacle, but they were just that - a nice touch, not a return to the old system.

 

Shame, that.

[drbanner]

Do you know when the grading guide will be available (in a comic book store near me)?

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

A few days ago I heard on-sale dates of either the 11th or the 18th, so since I haven't heard of anyone picking them up this week, I presume it will be the 18th.

[fantastic_four]

I just got a copy of the new grading guide yesterday. Arnold's comment in another thread is basically right--the glossy color pages are DAZZLING. The quality of those pictures alone is worth the price of the book, not to mention the educational value (or argumentative value, depending upon your perspective ) of the defects highlighted on each picture. I'm not yet sure they're big enough to see many of the highlighted defects--an online grading guide may end up being the ideal format--but the book sure is beautiful! The essays aren't drastically different from the 1992 edition; they were slightly edited with a little bit of clarification and a few new ideas. Matt Nelson's article on assigning numerical grades to measure the amount of restoration done to a comic appears at a glance to be the most innovatively new idea in the book; that article is well worth the read. I wish Tracey Heft had contributed an article on restoration; he indicated to me that he might pursue it but it appears that he didn't.

 

I'll post a more complete and objective review of the book once I'm done reading it and perusing the grading examples. ComicInvestor will hate the book and think he could've done better. But that's OK, he's like Mikey from those Life cereal commercials. He hates everything.

[MonumentalCo]

 

I could not agree enough with Steve regarding the new edition of the grading guide. Calling this book awesome is to put it mildly. This book is a great benefit to the hobby and we have everyone at Gemstone and those involved to thank for it. One of the greatest things about this guide is that it is all in color!

 

Tom

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

"slightly edited"

 

Hmm, and I thought it would be obvious I did a bit more rewriting than just editing, but oh well. Can't win 'em all!

 

But I'm glad to see you think the book is as stunning as we thought. By all means, keep the feedback coming.

[chromium]

Sounds great,now I just have to find a way to find a copy over here in Europeland

[fantastic_four]

Feedback will keep coming, and it will be specific and voluminous. To be fair and more precise, it appears there are five edited articles and eight brand-new ones. The best new articles are "A Restoration Proposal" by Matt Nelson, "Grading Victorian and Platinum Age Books" by Tom Gordon, "Grading Odd Format Comic Books" by J.C. Vaughn, "An Overview of CGC" by Steve Borock, and "Using the 10 Point Grading Scale."

 

I've read all the articles now, but I'll be poring over the pictorial examples for weeks to come. Just finished reading the "Using the 10 Point Grading Scale" article; this article is the biggest (published) advance to grading over the last 10 years. It was the lack of an article like this one that was the biggest weakness of the old grading guide. This article and the first page of each set of photographs that have the descriptions of what types of defects are allowed in every grade are the most important and most improved sections of the book.

 

Here are the strengths and weaknesses I've noticed so far with the grading guide:

 

Strengths

• [*]The chart on page 127 showing the minimum and maximum number of defects allowed in each grade. Kudos to Bob and Arnold for giving us a more exact set of quantitative criteria for each grade! I'm sure we'll all argue about the numbers, but it's a start. There is definitely a lot more specificity to be attained with comic book grading; we've made a few other suggestions in these forums for needed specificity that we'll hopefully see in a future revision. [*]The table at the bottom of page 128 which provides quantitative values to be directly associated with the qualitative descriptions used in the descriptions of defects allowable in each grade. For example, how minor is minor? The Guide defines "minor" to mean 3 to 5 defects ranging from 1/8" to 1/4" in length. This specificity has been sorely lacking both in the Overstreet's grading definitions and in defect descriptions given by dealers and collectors around the world. [*]A standard set of grading categories applied consistently to each grade. Overstreet's previous definitions for the grades were incomplete. For example, the 1992 Guide mentions that Very Fine comics can have yellowish/tannish pages, but the Near Mint and Mint descriptions didn't mention page whiteness at all. The new Guide has a set of 21 quality descriptions for which severities are consistently provided for every grade which appears in the book. The categories are:
  • [*]Bindery/Printing [*]Cover Inks/Gloss [*]Cover Wear [*]Cover Creases [*]Soiling, Staining [*]Dates/Stamps [*]Spine Roll [*]Spine Split [*]Staples [*]Staple Tears [*]Rust Migration [*]Stress Lines [*]Corners [*]Centerfold [*]Interior Tears [*]Paper Quality/Color [*]Acid Odor [*]Missing Pieces [*]Amateur Repairs [*]Coupon Cut [*]Readability

[*]The full-color glossy photos!

Weaknesses

• [*]No change at all to Susan Cicconi's guidelines on detecting restoration. Restoration detection will continue to be the most glaringly important absent skill amongst collectors; buying CGC comics is still the only way to protect yourself. The article in both Grading Guides is a bare-minimum introduction to restoration detection; there's nothing there on detecting professional color touch via visual inspection, nothing about using or purchasing a black light (you'd never know those are used in restoration detection from reading either Grading Guide, unless you noticed the black light in CGC's advertisement in the beginning of the new revision), or detecting trimming with any consistency. You can't go to a national convention without seeing comics for sale that don't have these features; the majority of national dealers can't detect restoration themselves, so buying unslabbed vintage books is still a shoot. PovertyRow's descriptions for detecting restoration in the "Golden Age Comics" forum on this web site are more comprehensive than the ones in the grading guide. The lack of information about restoration detection is still the biggest informational gap in literature available to dealers and collectors of high-cost comics.[*]The quantitative defect lengths assigned to the qualitative descriptors on page 128 is restrictively one-dimensional. Many defects, such as a stain, should be measured by area (two dimensions), not by length (one dimension). Even the most common defect on a comic--creasing--is really two-dimensional, not one-dimensional. A crease has both length AND width; some creases break color not at all, some break it a little, some a moderate amount, and some heavily.[*]No resolution of high grade comics with one fatal flaw, such as a cut-out coupon. CGC gives books like this the "Qualified" grade. The new Grading Guide makes grading this type of comic just as unclear as the previous Guide did. The chart on page 127 says that a Fair comic has between 15 and 24 defects; the description of allowable defects for Fair on page 315 notes that coupons may be cut. Fair is the highest grade that mentions coupons can be cut out. So is a comic that is otherwise Near Mint with a cut-out coupon a Fair or a Qualified Near Mint? The new Guide doesn't clear this up, and even confuses it further by indicating that Fair comics typically have at least 15 defects. [*]No replacement for the OWL scale. The new Guide mentions on page 89 that the old OWL scale is out of date, but it doesn't give any us anything to replace it. In the grade descriptions they now use the word "cream" which I didn't see in the previous Grading Guide. I'd also like to see a complete list of all the possible page whiteness descriptions; distilling them from this new Guide, they appear to be white, off-white, cream, tan, brown, and brittle. I won't give specifics, but I can also say that CGC's downgrading for page whiteness is still at major odds with the standards in the new Overstreet Grading Guide. [*]No pedigree reference. The only way to learn about pedigrees is still by reading Matt Nelson's CBM article on Golden Age pedigrees on his web site or by chatting with a large number of dealers/collectors and remembering what they said . [*]The pictures are too small to see some of the defects. I know, I know...we all complained the previous Grading Guide was tough to use because the pictures were in black and white. So they now gave us what we wanted--full-color photos! They're a definite improvement. However, they're too small. They're very resolute, but they need to be blown up. I doubt large pictures will ever be economically viable in a printed book on comic book grading due to the cost of paper and printing for a book with large pages which has the limited audience this one does. I definitely think they did an outstanding job with the photos given the constraints they faced.

The whole new level of specificity for the grading descriptions alone makes the new Grading Guide a worthwhile purchase. Everybody go buy one and read it so we can have something new to fight about.

[Zonker]

Arnold or F.F.

May I ask, What is Overstreet's current position on tape? Is this amateur repair?

 

Thanks in advance.

Z.

[aardvark88]

With the volume of bks that Cgc must grade, I'm not sure if they have time to do all of these grading tests esp. smelling the pgs for odor or humidity damage.

[fantastic_four]

If you mean they don't have time to look for the qualities in the 21 grade quality categories, I think CGC assesses all of those qualities already except perhaps "Acid Odor." CGC is supposed to find defects wherever they lie; the grading categories in the new Overstreet are simply a way to, well, categorize the defects.

 

The grading categories are a way to make sure we know which types of defects to look for; they could also be used as a checklist to make sure that we consistently look for them. I think we all have an expectation that CGC is already looking for most of those 21 types of defects consistently.

[fantastic_four]

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure that CGC doesn't downgrade for "Acid Odor." I noticed that the 1992 Grading Guide does mention odor in some of the grade descriptions. I haven't thought about it much because every Silver book I buy smells like cedar, as they should. I did buy a Haunt of Fear that smelled awful, though, so I'm sure they've got at least some opinion on it since they see and probably SMELL a lot of comics.

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

"Just finished reading the "Using the 10 Point Grading Scale" article; this article is the biggest (published) advance to grading over the last 10 years."

 

This makes me happier than you can know. That article was the primary focus for me, and it contains virtually everything that I wanted to introduce into the Guide about nailing down certain aspects of the terminology, as well as the charts, which were a lot of fun to compose while still leaving lots of room for interpretation for those people who would still like some elbow room.

 

 

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

I had the impression that it was always considered amateur repair. It's usually one of the only specific forms of amateur repair mentioned in either Grading Guide.