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

[Hepcat]

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

 

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.llll

 

I strongly agree on the miswraps. I hate them.

Date stamps bother me not at all though.

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

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.)

I agree on the signatures!

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"? 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.

I agree! It's only dealers who might like to call cruddy books "Good".

I still recall listening to a dealer from Montréal at a con in 2002 or so trying to explain to a woman why she might want to pay more for a comic she intended to gift to her husband because the other one was only "Very Good/VG". She was just bewildered.

[Hepcat]

On 6/20/2024 at 1:56 AM, Happy Noodle Boy said:

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".

Do you not remember that prior to some year in the 1980's Overstreet listed prices for Good, Fine and Mint condition comics? Few dealers would grade their older comics as Mint, but comics that would be F/VF+ by present standards were cavalierly assigned a grade of NM.

[Off Panel]

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"? 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.

When an older collector described the grade levels to me for the first time, he said, "'Very Good' means it's not very good."

I have always remembered and never disagreed with that.

[CitrusZ28]

On 6/20/2024 at 9:18 AM, Hepcat said:

Do you not remember that prior to some year in the 1980's Overstreet listed prices for Good, Fine and Mint condition comics? Few dealers would grade their older comics as Mint, but comics that would be F/VF+ by present standards were cavalierly assigned a grade of NM.

How true. Back in the day, if a comic was complete and had a cover with many small blemishes but no tears or chunks missing, they were often priced at the mint value and negotiated from there. I've experienced the reverse as many books that I bought back then for a near-mint price are coming back graded in the 5.0-7.5 range. Value wise I haven't really lost because I've had them 40+ years, but if today's grading standard was applied back then I would say that I was over charged between 30%-50% when I purchased them.

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 6/20/2024 at 9:10 AM, Hepcat said:

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

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.)

I agree on the signatures!

[Ken Aldred]

On 6/20/2024 at 6:45 AM, 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.

Something of a rite of passage for a new collector back in the olden days.

Buying a mail order comic for the first time, advertised in Good or Very Good condition, and getting confused upon seeing it actually look more like a bit of a torn rag.

From that point on I aimed for NM / M copies.

[Ken Aldred]

On 6/20/2024 at 5:18 PM, Hepcat said:

Do you not remember that prior to some year in the 1980's Overstreet listed prices for Good, Fine and Mint condition comics? Few dealers would grade their older comics as Mint, but comics that would be F/VF+ by present standards were cavalierly assigned a grade of NM.

 

On 6/20/2024 at 5:47 PM, CitrusZ28 said:

How true. Back in the day, if a comic was complete and had a cover with many small blemishes but no tears or chunks missing, they were often priced at the mint value and negotiated from there. I've experienced the reverse as many books that I bought back then for a near-mint price are coming back graded in the 5.0-7.5 range. Value wise I haven't really lost because I've had them 40+ years, but if today's grading standard was applied back then I would say that I was over charged between 30%-50% when I purchased them.

I did find one British mail order dealer who supplied really nice copies in his NM / M category, which I was consistently happy with.

On the other hand, in the late 70s I did purchase an almost complete run of the Silver Age Neal Adams X-Men issues at a comic mart which were in absolutely stunning condition; no creases, perfect alignment, incredible colour strike and gloss.

I then sourced an X-Men 58 by mail order which had several creases, quite dull colour presentation, and, suddenly, you realised how different the interpretation of NM / M could be out there.  It did seem to be, as was said here, a bit of a cavalier, “that one’ll do to fill the order” approach , rather than done to a stringent, professional, consistent standard by many.

In terms of presentation and colour, my current X-Men 58 9.0 absolutely crushes that original raw.

Looking back to that time, you can see the difference.

Edited June 21 by Ken Aldred

[Bookery]

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"? 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.

I'm okay with that.  But we'll still need a half-grades scale.  Junk.5, etc. 

[Robot Man]

On 6/20/2024 at 9:47 AM, CitrusZ28 said:

How true. Back in the day, if a comic was complete and had a cover with many small blemishes but no tears or chunks missing, they were often priced at the mint value and negotiated from there. I've experienced the reverse as many books that I bought back then for a near-mint price are coming back graded in the 5.0-7.5 range. Value wise I haven't really lost because I've had them 40+ years, but if today's grading standard was applied back then I would say that I was over charged between 30%-50% when I purchased them.

Back in the early ‘70’s an 8.0 was considered mint by all. The Mile High/Church collection really changed all that.

Then back then your choices and avenues for finding GA comics were very limited. You took what you could get and condition wasn’t such a big factor. 

[CitrusZ28]

On 6/21/2024 at 7:38 AM, Robot Man said:

Back in the early ‘70’s an 8.0 was considered mint by all. The Mile High/Church collection really changed all that.

Then back then your choices and avenues for finding GA comics were very limited. You took what you could get and condition wasn’t such a big factor. 

Yes, back then I had conventions which were hit or miss as far as what was available, especially since I didn't live in a major market that had huge conventions, only smaller ones with few out-of-state dealers attending, so selection was limited and you would take what you could get. Later on in the 80's I discovered the Comic Buyers Guide from which I procured many of my golden age books.

[Qalyar]

On 6/17/2024 at 2:01 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"? 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.

I just wanted to give some context here. Almost all of these collectibles grading scales effectively date back to the 1940s.

Possibly the first of these was the Sheldon scale for coins, created in 1948 by Dr. William Herbert Sheldon, Jr., initially as a way to discuss the condition of early US cents (large cents). Sheldon's tier descriptors were Poor / About Good / Good / Fine / Very Fine / Extremely Fine / About Uncirculated (which we'd call Near Mint) / Mint. He also created a bizarre numeric scale for coin grades that caps at 70 because he was also trying to standardize pricing and thought that there should be about a factor of 70 in value between the worst and best examples of coins. The price standardization obviously didn't work out like he'd hoped, but numismatics is stuck with his weird 70 point scale.

The following year, trade publication AB Bookman's Weekly established a grading scale for books: Poor / Fair / Good / Very Good / Fine / As New. That's largely still in place today, as evidenced by booksellers like AbeBooks using it.

Comics grading, which is mostly owed to Overstreet for its overall scale, obviously follows the AB Bookman's Weekly format with a few other tiers added in: Poor / Fair / Good / Very Good / Fine / Very Fine / Near Mint / Mint (with plus, minus, and transition grades to fill out the full scale). Why do all of these scales have "Good" for an item that's ... not very good, and the ones that use "Fair" reserve it for things even worse than that? I don't know, and Sheldon's long dead, so we can't ask him. But a reasonable suggestion is that it's to enable sales of low-grade collectibles. No one would be likely to purchase an item whose condition is described as "Bad", "Terrible", or "Honestly, Just Wrecked".

 

[Hepcat]

On 6/21/2024 at 2:17 PM, Qalyar said:

But a reasonable suggestion is that it's to enable sales of low-grade collectibles. No one would be likely to purchase an item whose condition is described as "Bad", "Terrible", or "Honestly, Just Wrecked".

Like I say, the descriptive terminology for comic grading was originally created for the benefit of comic dealers/sellers.

[Happy Noodle Boy]

New grading scale:

Minty fresh

Cool

I Like it, I Just Wish it Didn't Have That Crease Right There

Whatevs

Pass

Get That Away From Me

Crapmobile

 

(Any book with a miswrap can't grade above I Like it, I Just Wish it Didn't Have That Crease Right There. Any book with writing on the cover can't grade above Whatevs.)

Edited June 21 by Happy Noodle Boy

[Telegan]

I'll just be happy if they change the grading terms from all being variations on "pretty good/ok"

2.0? It's Good.  Wow, if Good is at 2.0, I can't wait to see what all the higher grades are called!

4.0? It's Very Good.

6.0?  It's Fine (wait... did we go backwards here?)

5.0 - 8.0? Some variation of "It's Fine".

1.0? It's Fair.

0.5? It's Poor.  We finally got one that means "it's bad" and doesn't sound like some variation of "eh".

Most of these grades sound like some emo guy saying "whatever, dude".

Edited June 21 by Telegan

[RockMyAmadeus]

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

[shadroch]

Does it matter if you call a 2.0 book good, bad, or below average? It's still a 2.0 book.  With CGC's new grade inflation, how long before we need a new term for 11s?

Pristine Mint Plus Plus?

[Off Panel]

2.0 - Double Plus Good

 

 

(With apologies to George Orwell.)

[Hepcat]

On 6/21/2024 at 6:10 PM, shadroch said:

Does it matter if you call a 2.0 book good, bad, or below average? It's still a 2.0 book.

You are assuming that CGC's numbering scale supercedes all previous grading terminology. But (to paraphrase Stan Lee) those who aren't all about CGC still walk among us.

[shadroch]

On 6/22/2024 at 8:49 PM, Hepcat said:

You are assuming that CGC's numbering scale supercedes all previous grading terminology. But (to paraphrase Stan Lee) those who aren't all about CGC still walk among us.

CGC didn't invent the numeric rating scale. 

It was in use well before CGC. I think Metropolis introduced it.