That's Just Like, Your Opinion, Man 2 2

[Happy Noodle Boy]

If I were creating my own comic book grading scale from scratch...

A book with a miswrap couldn't grade above an 8.0. Neither could a book with a date stamp. The worse the miswrap, the lower the grade.

A book with writing on the cover that isn't a date stamp couldn't grade above a 6.0. That includes autographs and "remarks". (Put them in the gutters on the splash pages if you must. We're collecting comics, not signatures.)

How many people think a grade of 2 out of 10 can really be called "good" and 4 out of 10 "very good"? Everyone knows these terms make no sense. In my grading scale the grade "Very Good" would be replaced with "Fair", "Good" would be replaced with "Poor", and "Poor" would be replaced with "Junk". I think these terms are better descriptors for books in those conditions.

Anybody else want to play?

[Lazyboy]

On 6/17/2024 at 2:01 PM, Happy Noodle Boy said:

A book with a miswrap couldn't grade above an 8.0. ... The worse the miswrap, the lower the grade.

As much as I dislike miswraps, that's absurdly harsh. The tiniest miswrap would seriously knock the top potential grade down that much and it would get even worse from there?

[Ken Aldred]

On 6/17/2024 at 8:34 PM, Lazyboy said:

As much as I dislike miswraps, that's absurdly harsh. The tiniest miswrap would seriously knock the top potential grade down that much and it would get even worse from there?

Then, add in hammering the grade of a miswrap even further down with another production issue such as staple placement, another aesthetic concern, and the assessment clearly isn’t going to work. We’d be down to absurdly low grades if all OCD presentation factors were punished like that.

As in the thread title, it’s all subjective, especially your tolerance threshold.

Edited June 17 by Ken Aldred

[Happy Noodle Boy]

On the whole miswraps thing...another way to look at an 8.0 is that it's a Very Fine. Back before CGC conditioned us all to expect every other book to be a 9.6 or a 9.8, Very Fine was a pretty solidly high grade.

And I should clarify that a miswrap would have to be noticeable without having to use a magnifying glass; I'm not talking about a horizontal Marvel banner logo being at an eighty-nine-degree angle instead of a ninety-degree angle.

 

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

CGC is grading the state of preservation and leaves the “eye appeal” decisions to us. 
 

so although my opinion differs a bit from yours, I totally get what you’re saying. Plus, you just quoted the Dude in your thread title, and that in and of itself makes you an educated man 

[comicginger1789]

I mean if it’s slight (the miswrap) I personally don’t care. If someone has a perfect 9.8 and someone else has a 9.8 with a slight miswrap that doesn’t bother me at all. I’ll take whichever one is priced cheaper and would understand if the better wrapped one were priced a bit more

Now something like this I would pass on. And I would agree it should be docked in some way. It can’t be a 9.8 (I know this particular example never would be anyways but I’m just using the miswrap flaw it shows as an example) 

 

[Robot Man]

On 6/17/2024 at 12:01 PM, Happy Noodle Boy said:

If I were creating my own comic book grading scale from scratch...

A book with a miswrap couldn't grade above an 8.0. Neither could a book with a date stamp. The worse the miswrap, the lower the grade.

A book with writing on the cover that isn't a date stamp couldn't grade above a 6.0. That includes autographs and "remarks". (Put them in the gutters on the splash pages if you must. We're collecting comics, not signatures.)

How many people think a grade of 2 out of 10 can really be called "good" and 4 out of 10 "very good"? Everyone knows these terms make no sense. In my grading scale the grade "Very Good" would be replaced with "Fair", "Good" would be replaced with "Poor", and "Poor" would be replaced with "Junk". I think these terms are better descriptors for books in those conditions.

Anybody else want to play?

I agree on miswraps as well as many other “production flaws”. Grading is at the end of the day a personal opinion. I just spend my money accordingly on my opinions.

I do disagree on calling a “very good” book a “fair”. Strictly graded vg books are far from fair. I even have a bunch of “junk” books in my collection. I just paid accordingly.

Just my 2 cents…

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 6/17/2024 at 12:01 PM, Happy Noodle Boy said:

How many people think a grade of 2 out of 10 can really be called "good" and 4 out of 10 "very good"?

[DanJD]

On 6/19/2024 at 8:51 AM, comicginger1789 said:

I mean if it’s slight (the miswrap) I personally don’t care. If someone has a perfect 9.8 and someone else has a 9.8 with a slight miswrap that doesn’t bother me at all. I’ll take whichever one is priced cheaper and would understand if the better wrapped one were priced a bit more

Now something like this I would pass on. And I would agree it should be docked in some way. It can’t be a 9.8 (I know this particular example never would be anyways but I’m just using the miswrap flaw it shows as an example) 

 

I agree.  A miswrap that is minor or is at least fairly straight along the spine does not bother me when buying.  

Depending on the age of the book, I am also ok buying books with off-white to white or even off-white pages.  I can’t see the pages either way in the slab.  I know that drives some collectors nuts.

[sfcityduck]

This thread really goes to the question: "What is the purpose of the grade?"

I read a lot of opinions on that. One end of the continuum is those who argue that the purpose of a grade is to assess "structural issues." On the other end of the continuum are those who argue a grade should be an aesthetic assessment. But even in those two camps there's a lot of disagreement.

I have a different view. To me, the purpose of a grade is two-fold: (1) To warn the buyer of flaws in the comic they are to purchase - which is especially important for encapsulated comics and (2) to encourage the proper care and preservation of comics into the future.

With that in mind, here's the considerations I would use to grade comics:

• Conservation is a factor not a category - e.g. comics should be marked down for flaws, but not punished for conserving them
• Restoration is a category but there is no meaningful difference between denoting something amateur vs. professional 
• Page color (aesthetic - tan to white) including the cover (which I think should get a separate rating due to difference in paper stock)!
• Suppleness of pages (structural - brittle/flaking to fresh) including the cover (see above) with a grade limitation based on paper structure (e.g. no brittle comic should be allowed a high grade no matter how good it looks from a distance)!
• Mark down for oxidation on staples BUT I would not mark down a staple replacement (we should want to prevent rust transfer to paper!)
• Mark down for tears (based on size w/ bigger worse) BUT I would not make an additional mark down for use of removable tear seals (just require a note of disclosure b/c we want tears limited! Mark down for the tear, not the removable conservation designed to contain the tear)
• Mark down for color touch unless insignificantly small (e.g. a possible stray pen point mark) BUT I would mark down for scrapes more (CT removal that leads to holes in the comic is an abomination!)
• Strong mark downs for missing pieces based on size (much worse than creases) and "restored" designation for all piece filling techniques with caps on grades that reflect what the books would look like without restoration (in other words - restoration is an aesthetic fix that should be highlighted and, like conservation should not impact grade up or down - e.g. replacing 60% of a cover for a Frankenbook is just like putting a cover on a coverless comic - the grade should remain the same even though it looks better, a Frankenbook does not deserve a high number)
• No ignoring of structural "production flaws" like "Marvel chips" as they are still flaws (its ok to have comics where no copy comes close to maxing out the grade scale due to production flaws as with Captain Marvel 1) because allowing "production flaw" exceptions just opens a loophole door that is abused
• Minimal consideration of "centering" and only a cap on grade at the highest end
• Significant consideration of "registration" up and down the scale with a cap on grading or use of a "qualified" designation
• Fading and color vibrance should be a factor especially at the high end of the scale
• I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out

 

[shadroch]

Are you talking the buying grade or the selling grade?

[Ken Aldred]

On 6/19/2024 at 2:51 PM, comicginger1789 said:

I mean if it’s slight (the miswrap) I personally don’t care. If someone has a perfect 9.8 and someone else has a 9.8 with a slight miswrap that doesn’t bother me at all. I’ll take whichever one is priced cheaper and would understand if the better wrapped one were priced a bit more

Now something like this I would pass on. And I would agree it should be docked in some way. It can’t be a 9.8 (I know this particular example never would be anyways but I’m just using the miswrap flaw it shows as an example) 

 

Yup.

My example would be FF 67, 1st appearance of Him / Warlock.

A nightmare OCD combination of bad front-to-back miswraps, miscuts, and staple placement issues.

 

 

[LowGradeBronze]

If you start taking the interior print register into account, to be consistent, and the cut of the interior pages then you'd end up needing a grading scale with more data points and make actually determining the 'condition' of the comic to anyone's satisfaction impossible. 

You'd need at least 3 data points for each book and each assigned mark would need to be on an agreed scale like 1 to 10, to take account of

1) overall condition (ie state of preservation,) followed by assigned grades for

2) the aesthetic points you raise like a other bindery issues, (ie mis-wraps, staple placement, bindery tears etc) and

3) print register and interior print quality (strike)

Think of the debates on the boards then about whether this comic really is a 9/9/9 or a 10/9/8 etc etc.

As much as I applaud the provoking of (hopefully) constructive argument, I fear this idea is a non starter. 

[namisgr]

On 6/17/2024 at 3:01 PM, Happy Noodle Boy said:

How many people think a grade of 2 out of 10 can really be called "good" and 4 out of 10 "very good"?

In a world where the small sized shrimp are called large, and then progressively larger ones extra large and jumbo, starting with 'good' near the bottom of the scale seems reasonable.

And as alluded to already, it's an adoption of coin grading in which 'good' is also used as the basic lower grade for a well worn piece that isn't completely trashed or substantially destroyed.

[LowGradeBronze]

There would be far, far fewer high grade books in your world and many books would be treated harshly too. That would be my main concern, as I would be very happy with a high grade given for a book with a date stamp. I do agree with you about signatures though. I don't care whose signature it is, I don't want it in marker pen across the cover! 

[universal soldier]

If I had a choice between two books at the same grade that had around the same centering, wrap etc... and the only difference was a date stamp, I would choose the book with the stamp 99% of the time. To me that's not a flaw but a badge of honor if you will.

[sfcityduck]

On 6/19/2024 at 5:12 PM, universal soldier said:

If I had a choice between two books at the same grade that had around the same centering, wrap etc... and the only difference was a date stamp, I would choose the book with the stamp 99% of the time. To me that's not a flaw but a badge of honor if you will.

Agree. I sold this census topping copy on Heritage in 2018. Two of the other five 9.6s have sold since ... for less with the same page quality and no date stamp.

Edited June 20 by sfcityduck

[Happy Noodle Boy]

On 6/19/2024 at 10:42 AM, Robot Man said:

I do disagree on calling a “very good” book a “fair”. Strictly graded vg books are far from fair.

They're far from fair if you're using the current comic grading definition of "fair". What I'm saying is that the word fair as defined in the dictionary (i.e, decent, okay, reasonably good) is a far better descriptor of a book in "very good" condition than "very good" is.

[Happy Noodle Boy]

Regarding the miswrap debate I started by saying they shouldn't grade above an 8.0--I still believe that, but an "adjective system" of grading makes it feel more appropriate. "No book with a noticeable miswrap should be allowed to grade higher than a Very Fine" sounds just right to me. But when you get into the forensics of numerical grading, especially with the prevalence of 9.6 and 9.8 comics in the hobby due to CGC's influence, I admit it seems like a huge reduction. I guess my heart lies with the old Overstreet system, where "near mint" was the top grade you saw out there. How many comic shop dealers back then would have tried to sell you a "mint" back issue? In all my years of back issue hunting (in the pre-CGC days) I never encountered a back issue marked as "Mint". But now "Near Mint Plus" (9.6) and "Near Mint/Mint" (9.8) are grades that are bought and sold routinely. Because CGC is around to call them that.

Before CGC I assume anyone trying to sell a 9.6 or 9.8 book would have described it as "the nicest copy you've ever seen, I think it's closer to mint than near mint", and then, maybe, they would have been able to get an extra 20% over the Near Mint price. That was a saner world.

[Robot Man]

On 6/19/2024 at 10:45 PM, Happy Noodle Boy said:

They're far from fair if you're using the current comic grading definition of "fair". What I'm saying is that the word fair as defined in the dictionary (i.e, decent, okay, reasonably good) is a far better descriptor of a book in "very good" condition than "very good" is.

Maybe but Merriam-Webster never collected comic books…