Point Five's 3rd Annual Grading Contest: ROUND 4 BOOKS! 5 5

[Point Five]

CLOSED

[Point Five]

Reveals coming up...   

 

[Point Five]

8. Radiant Love #2

A really nice midgrade that presumably took a grade hit with that stacking bend along the right edge. (Kind of like the Jungle #36 7.5. What *is* it with this batch of books and invisible creases?) Glossy and attractive cover. My guess before submission was 6.5.

 

[Point Five]

9. Rangers Comics #25

My guess was 4.5 but no issue at all, the staining reasonably dropped it quite a bit, plus other small flaws.
 

[Point Five]

10. Tomb of Terror #16

Very pretty and glossy black cover. Looks like there are small tears in both staple areas, not mentioned in the grading notes but I'd think that was a sizable factor in the grade. Thought this one might squeak out a 5.5 (I've seen worse GAs in a 5.5 slab for sure) but no dice.
 

[Point Five]

Results thread on the way!

 

[AJD]

  I'll say no more.

Except maybe

[grendelbo]

The Ranger Comics was the only grade I changed upon my second look - from 4.0 to 4.5. 

D'oh! 

[Point Five]

On 9/2/2022 at 10:15 PM, grendelbo said:

The Ranger Comics was the only grade I changed upon my second look - from 4.0 to 4.5. 

D'oh! 

Ouch, I hear you. I think it was a 4.0/4.5 tweener and could be argued either way. It's a pretty one for sure.

 

[Point Five]

On 9/2/2022 at 10:15 PM, AJD said:

  I'll say no more.

Except maybe

Don't let it go to your head!   

 

[AJD]

On 9/3/2022 at 12:32 PM, Point Five said:

Don't let it go to your head!   

 

I will. Bwahahahaha.

[grendelbo]

On 9/2/2022 at 8:32 PM, Point Five said:

Don't let it go to your head!   

 

I was never off by more than a grade and finished 2nd by a difference of two points.

[fastballspecial]

I hate GA books when grading. That Radiant book I thought was much better then 6.0
I have no idea how many of you can grade the older books so well I guess it takes
practice to know how the defects lay out. 

I grade them much harder and when I don't I get a surprise like the Radiant book.
Oh thanks for the contest I learn something each time.  

[flashlites]

Great contest Jon! Thanks so much for putting it on. I got one bullseye this round and undergraded the other 2 but only by .5. So I still need to loosen up a little. I have fully embraced the concept and technique for giving these book the most generous grades conceivably possible and still I come up a little short. I need to calibrate to the CGC secret sauce which keeps telling me "you are being too strict, bump it a little more. What's the highest grade you could give it and then add .5 to that". So you can see my dilemma, my most generous grade and adding .5 is still short another .5 in most cases. 

[grendelbo]

On 9/2/2022 at 9:18 PM, flashlites said:

Great contest Jon! Thanks so much for putting it on. I got one bullseye this round and undergraded the other 2 but only by .5. So I still need to loosen up a little. I have fully embraced the concept and technique for giving these book the most generous grades conceivably possible and still I come up a little short. I need to calibrate to the CGC secret sauce which keeps telling me "you are being too strict, bump it a little more. What's the highest grade you could give it and then add .5 to that". So you can see my dilemma, my most generous grade and adding .5 is still short another .5 in most cases. 

It's like Jon said a few days ago - when grading we look for defaults. But even with mid-or-low-grade books we need to look at their attributes. What do the books have going for them despite their obvious, and sometimes large or severe flaws? That'll often make a difference in a grade bump or two. This is especially true with GA, SA and key books, IMO.

[Black_Adam]

The Tomb of Terror grade must have been very disappointing, Jon. To ease your pain I will take it off your hands. 

[Comics4All]

@Point Five Thank you so much!

It was fun! 

[ADAMANTIUM]

@Point Five Thanks for the contest, I gave that tomb 4.0.

It took me until the last round that graders notes should be taken with a grain of salt, when the appearance plays apart! Congrats to any winners, and I'm on to see results!  

[Point Five]

As discussed before, and mentioned in my posts every round  , the grader notes are kind of random about what they do and don't mention. (Which I kind of get... graders are slammed and they need to spend more time grading and less time writing up little notes.)

In some cases the notes are fairly prescriptive, such that you could almost guess the grade range without seeing the book; in others they barely mention the most prominent flaws. I started out thinking I would only give the notes that mentioned grade-dropping defects not visible from the scans... but after playing around with trying to edit them down, I realized that I honestly didn't know which notes were relevant to the grade and which weren't. Something like e.g. "moderate tanning" could be taken either way (is "moderate" good or bad for a book 70+ years old?). So in the end I just dumped them all in for you guys to sort out.  

 

[BriD.]

Thanks for a fun and challenging contest! Looking forward to the next one.