THE PQ IS WHITE....WHAT'S THE QP?

[THE_BEYONDER]

Hard to say without a BC scan.

 

It looks to me that the book has a slight miswrap to the back cover..... (looking at the word MARVEL......)

[fantastic_four]

Alrightee, here are your back cover scans--now hurry up and grade my books dammit, I paid for walkthru service with your steenking company and I want my books graded, and I want them graded RIGHT!!!

 

FF 10 back cover

Thor 124 back cover

[THE_BEYONDER]

Should a book that has a 3mm angled miswrap grade the same as a book that has a straight 3mm miswrap?

 

I think the angle should be downgraded for very slightly worse. Overstreet doesn't take something like this into account; it tends to only give one severity attribute for defects--length in inches. Many defects have several attributes, however, such as angle in degrees or area in square inches.

 

The problem with doing a straight deduction on any defect such as Arty suggests (0.1 per 1 mm), whether it be production or otherwise, is that it doesn't fit well when mixed with other defects that are more severe. For example, if you have a book with a 1/8" miswrap, staples to the front by 1/4", and a 5 degree miscut on the right edge, the 5 degree edge miscut would be by far the worse defect, and the miswrap and staples would be so comparatively slight that they can simply be "riders" on the downgrade for the miscut. Point deduction systems tend to break down unless you set some kind of upper limits at which you stop deducting...there are certain types of books that would get negative scores if you're not careful with a point deduction system. I think they can work if you set limits, but I haven't personally seen anyone come up with a set of successful limits yet.

 

Okay FF,

 

I'm going to go ahead and appoint you SECONDARY GRADER

 

Where's Arty when we need him?

[THE_BEYONDER]

Alrightee, here are your back cover scans--now hurry up and grade my books dammit, I paid for walkthru service with your steenking company and I want my books graded, and I want them graded RIGHT!!!

 

FF 10 back cover

Thor 124 back cover

 

10.0's......

[THE_BEYONDER]

What do you think about this staple?

 

A deduction of .1 ?

 

[fantastic_four]

What do you think about this staple?

 

A deduction of .1 ?

 

I don't think so, no, especially since you could "restore" that staple to make it straight. A bent staple would be another matter...this is something I would downgrade by 0.1 for:

 

 

However, I can't see a reason go lower than 0.1 for a staple as long as they're there and holding the book together...they're such a small part of the overall book that I can't see downgrading much for them. When I hear people espousing the aesthetic beauty of a staple, I don't get it...they're not part of the art, they almost never interfere with the art (unless they're rusted and stain the paper), they're a VERY small percentage of the total area a comic book covers...so why should they matter much?

[fantastic_four]

10.0's......

 

I set you up on the Journey Into Mystery 124...the way the cover art is positioned on that issue makes it look like there might be a slight miswrap, even when it's positioned correctly. But my setup wasn't fair, because as you pointed out, you need to see the back cover to be sure if you're not already familiar with the "lay" of the art on any given issue.

[THE_BEYONDER]

10.0's......

 

I set you up on the Journey Into Mystery 124...the way the cover art is positioned on that issue makes it look like there might be a slight miswrap, even when it's positioned correctly. But my setup wasn't fair, because as you pointed out, you need to see the back cover to be sure if you're not already familiar with the "lay" of the art on any given issue.

 

Welcome to QP Industries .....

[THE_BEYONDER]

What do you think?

 

QP deduction of .1 for " slight miswrap to BC "

 

[greggy]

0.2 because it's your book!

[THE_BEYONDER]

Should there be a deduction for this indented staple ?

 

[greggy]

Nah...we'll give it the BEYONDER benefit of the doubt!

[fantastic_four]

What do you think?

 

QP deduction of .1 for " slight miswrap to BC "

 

I have a problem with the numbers we're throwing around. Do you mean 0.1 on the overall grade, or 0.1 on JUST the "Quality of Production."? There are a dozen or more other defect categories besides QP which go into overall grade...if you only deduct 0.1 on the QP sub-grade, then it should have no effect when you factor it in with defects from the other categories.

 

I'm thinking that if you're just trying to come up with a QP grade that is only one part of the overall grade, a miswrap like this counts for a bit more...perhaps 0.4.

[fantastic_four]

Should there be a deduction for this indented staple ?

 

 

If we're talking ONLY about QP, then I'd deduct 0.1 for this.

 

And come to think of it, using these increased weights for QP-only defects, your staple that isn't sitting right should be 0.1, and mine that is bent should be 0.4.

[THE_BEYONDER]

What do you think?

 

QP deduction of .1 for " slight miswrap to BC "

 

I have a problem with the numbers we're throwing around. Do you mean 0.1 on the overall grade, or 0.1 on JUST the "Quality of Production."? There are a dozen or more other defect categories besides QP which go into overall grade...if you only deduct 0.1 on the QP sub-grade, then it should have no effect when you factor it in with defects from the other categories.

 

I'm thinking that if you're just trying to come up with a QP grade that is only one part of the overall grade, a miswrap like this counts for a bit more...perhaps 0.4.

 

I'm thinking of a QP grade that is seperate from the CGC grade.

 

If the QP was a 10.0 aside from the slight miswrap , you would say that the book would grade a 9.4 ?

 

I guess we need to decide what the QP SCALE should look like.....

 

Are we going to grade the QP once it drops below a 9.0?

[THE_BEYONDER]

To start off simple......let's say we have 3 areas of production defects that we take into consideration:

[*]MISWRAPS [*]MISCUTS/CENTERING [*]STAPLE PLACEMENT

 

Let's say the miswrap gets a 9.6

The staples get a 9.9

And the cut and centering get a 9.9

 

29.4 as a score out of a possible 30......

 

QP= 9.7

[fantastic_four]

If the QP was a 10.0 aside from the slight miswrap , you would say that the book would grade a 9.4 ?

 

Definitely not...I'd say more like a 9.9 overall grade, 9.6 QP grade.

 

 

Are we going to grade the QP once it drops below a 9.0?

 

Yes, there's no reason not to, although it might not have an impact on overall grade. If you've got a book has ONLY a 3" corner crease which puts it in the Fine range, it's still an attractive book where QP matters. Would the QP have much of an affect on grade below 9.0? Yes, it would if the QP defect were severe enough. I've seen some badly produced books which made it out onto the stands...saw an old copy of Daredevil once with staples that were about 2" offset on the front cover--YES, 2 full inches! I've seen a 1" miswrap before...and bad miscuts like the one Joe pointed out on the 2002 Overstreet Grading Guide page 233 aren't EASY to find, but common enough to where you see them once out of every thousand books or so you flip through.

[fantastic_four]

To start off simple......let's say we have 3 areas of production defects that we take into consideration:

[*]MISWRAPS [*]MISCUTS/CENTERING [*]STAPLE PLACEMENT

 

Let's say the miswrap gets a 9.6

The staples get a 9.9

And the cut and centering get a 9.9

 

29.4 as a score out of a possible 30......

 

QP= 9.7

 

Sounds reasonable!

[THE_BEYONDER]

What it all comes down to is this:

 

Would you rather have a CGC 9.8 with a QP of 9.2, or a CGC 9.2 with a QP of 9.8?

[THE_BEYONDER]

Hope you don't mind, but I thought this response would be helpful to this thread.....

 

"The Overstreet guidelines on this are unclear. A 9.8 can have "subtle" defects at the 9.8 level (2002 OGG, pages 146-147), and "subtle" translates to 1/32" to 1/16". If this book were a perfect 10.0 in all respects but the staples, what's the grade?

 

Let's say the staples are offset by 1/8". On the one hand, you could argue that since a 9.8 can have 1 to 2 bindery/printing defects (2002 OGG, page 127), the staple offset could be considered as two 1/16" defects and fall into the 9.8 grade. On the other hand, you could argue that this defect is more severe than "subtle" at 1/8" and therefore should fall all the way to the 9.2 level since that's the first place they list "minor" bindery/printing defects as being allowed, with "minor" translating to 1/16" to 1/8". I find dropping this book all the way to 9.2 to be overly harsh.

 

The reason I say the guidelines are unclear is because "bindery/printing" is too broad a defect category. Does this mean that offset staples by 1/8" is downgraded the same as a 1/8" miswrap? That doesn't make sense to me; a 1/8" miswrap is MUCH more noticable since it's not ONLY 1/8", it actually creates a rectangular area that is 1/8" by whatever the height of the comic is--let's say 10.5"--which yields a total affected area roughtly equal to 1.3". Offset staples affect a TINY total surface area, which is why they're not as noticable as an offset. You can spot an offset right away, but misplaced staples can take 5-10 seconds to spot because the area is so small. Spotting offset staples can be even more difficult if the staples are well-hidden in ...."