Be Honest!

How good of a grader are you? When it comes to being accurate in my grading abilities as they stand right now, it completely depends on what I'm being asked to grade.

To put it all in perspective, let's separate out the varied types of books by AGE and TYPE, and apply a grade to how accurately we feel that we honestly hold up, using the same grading scale as the one given to our lovely treasures. The higher the grade, in this exercise, the better you are at getting the grade of the book exactly right, more often than not. The lower the grade, the farther away your grade of a book is from the experts grade, more often than not.

As an example, here's mine (remember, I'm being completely honest here):

Golden Age - 9.0

Silver Age - 9.2

Bronze Age - 9.4

Copper Age - 9.8

Modern Age - 9.6

Graphic Novels - 9.9

Magazines and Magazine size Comics - 9.8

Squarebound annuals and specials - 8.0

Treasuries - never tried

Actually, now that I really look at it, this is pretty darn good overall. If I had made this list six years ago, the grades would have been far less. Probably more into the 7's and 8's overall. Since then, I have learned a whole lot about what to look for when eyeballing a comic for grade potential. Being a perfectionist by nature also helps, but as you can see by my current list, there is still room for lots of improvement.

When it comes to magazines, graphic novels and Copper Age items, I'm in my element. But I still have some improvement to make in being more accurate with Bronze Age and older books. And when it comes to those darn squarebound books, I have not been very accurate with them at all. And if they come from out of a polybag, I'm horrendous with them.

While Treasuries are not a "slab-able" item, I would still like to spend some time with them someday and develop the ability to be accurate with them. But those aren't always around in plentiful amounts to really examine closely, so that will be a future goal for me down the road.

With modern books, I tend to lean just slightly towards being a little too lenient sometimes, because I'm willing to forgive a little more, as I do with Copper Age books, when I should actually be a little more strict. After all, modern manufacturing technology means that new stuff should be far more perfect right off the press than back in the Copper Age and earlier.

So I'm still working to improve myself and become a good enough grader to compare with these awesome guys at the third party grading companies. You never know when you might need to apply for a job right?

Someday I hope to have each of these grades be a minimum of 9.6, and preferably all 9.8 or better, but until then I will continue to practice, practice, practice!! I hope to be an even better grader by the end of 2015.

So what do you think? How do you stack up if you're being completely honest with yourself? How much more do you feel you could improve?

Below is the copy of Fury #1 I found raw in Orlando at Megacon earlier this year. I knew it would get 9.8 and since Sienkiewicz and Palmiotti were both in attendance, I went ahead and had them sign it!

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