Avengers 4, Care to Grade?

[aardvark88]

May be structurally 9.4 but loses points for off color pgs, so cgc 9.2.

[greggy]

Yo, you never bid on my 9.4 with white pages when it was posted on eBay earlier in the year!

[Moriarty]

Whoops, my mistake.

[hammer-migration]

Also, Everyone should keep in mind that there was a warehouse find on the Book and record 1966 reprint sets (FF, JIM, and Avengers. Probably the Spiderman 1 as well but in all probability, someone is sitting on a pile of them as of yet and will trickle them out one by one)! The packaging keeps the comics in absolutely beautiful state as the comic is pressed flat against the 12" record cover. Of course you'd do well to leave the item sealed because prior to the find, very few records with pristine LP jackets and covers were in existance as well as the comic itself.

[murph0]

pfft there seems to be a "warehouse" find for just about every comic out there. But I would agree, the record acted as a "board" for the comic and a lot of them are in very nice shape..

 

Brian

[ablue]

Crappy book murph0

 

 

[murph0]

Thanks for proving my point, you're not here to do anything other then cause trouble or reply to your own "threads".

 

Brian

[BachelorOfComix]

Crappy book murph0

 

Bah, I'll take it over any of your cleaned & pressed POS anytime.

 

Cheers,

 

Bachelor of Comics

[duncan36]

9.2

[CosmicBob]

Here's a dumb question. How do you know it's number 4? I don't see a number on the cover (unless I'm completely blind).

 

I would venture to guess this (based on the front cover scan) to be a 9.2. I see a small corner ding in the lower right, in addition to the top one mentioned.

[duncan36]

By the way thats what I think CGC would grade it, I would give it a 8.6-8.8.

Because what happens when you find a nicer whiter copy but with some flaws? It deserves a 9.2-9.4 so then do you overgrade that and give it a 9.6-9.8 to make sure everyone realizes its more appealing than your slightly dull 9.2 or do you give it a 9.4 because well thats what it is even though it miles better than your 9.2 copy?

Your post has touched on the main flaw in CGC's grading.

[murph0]

There is no 8.6-8.8, only 8.5

 

Brian

[duncan36]

Theres nothing between 8.5 and 9.0 that seems silly.

[murph0]

VF+ to VF/NM, I don't really think VF++ or VF+++ should be called a grade.

 

Brian

[duncan36]

Well I was more concerned with going from a .5 distinction from 8.5-9.0 to immediately a .2 distinction from 9.0 to 9.2. I suppose most people are happy though because there would be a lot less 9.0's if there was a 8.8.

[hammer-migration]

Some folks have a hard enough time trying to figure how CGC or anyone else doing the grading can distinguish between an 8.5 and a 9.0 consistantly without added intermediary steps. Look at it this way: PSA, who has graded, in all probability, more sportscards than any other grading service, uses a 10 point system: 1 fair, 2 good, 3 VG, 4 VG/EX, 5 EX, 6 EX/MT, 7 NM, 8 NM/MT, 9 MT, 10 GemMint .

Crad hobbyists have a pretty good idea of what to expect seeing when you hear somone has a T206 Cobb in PSA 5 and how it will differ from a PSA 6. Sometimes, concise is best.

[fantastic_four]

That's a pretty good point. The ONE 100-point scale was too ambitious, so Overstreet went to the 25-notches between 0.5 and 10 scale a few years ago. Maybe even that's too ambitious until somebody writes much more exacting criteria for the different grades. I know I allow myself, others, and CGC a 1/4 grade margin of error...having that much deviation as a common part of business points at the possibility that the 25-notch scale is ahead of its time.

 

And if you think about it, it's even harder for comics guys to have a more ambitious scale, because we've got a LOT more complexity to deal with in grading since the surface area of the exterior is much larger, not to mention the fact that we have an interior that nobody has come up with anywhere close to exhaustive criteria to factor into overall grade.

 

If the card guys admit that they can't get much more precise than the 10-point scale, how can we try to achieve 2.5 times as much precision? TOOOOOO ambitious. I would feel VERY confident about tight graders accurately using a 10-point scale, but I don't feel that ANYBODY can use even the 25-point scale right now with a high degree of precision. Not Steve Borock, not Bob Overstreet, not Steve Fishler (I mention him since he takes credit for suggesting the current scale to Overstreet) not you, not me, not anybody. 60% to 70% accuracy, sure, but 90% or more like I want when paying big bucks for something? Nope, I just don't trust it. This is why we're all on shaky ground paying these multiples of guide for items over 9.0. More often than not it'll be a sound investment, but not often enough for the amount some of us pay!

[drbanner]

You guys are exactly right. I'm thinking that most of the "this 9.4 should've been a 9.6", "This 9.2 should've been a 9.0", and "My modern 8.0 would've been a 9.0 if it was a golden age book" are books that fall outside of one standard deviation of the bell curve (in addition to one or two sour grapes). I'm sure if you want through any Dealer's stock of "NM" books and sorted them according to what you felt the grade was, there'd be a noticable difference in what the top 2% looked like when compared to the bottom 2%. Grading is an art that takes lots of practice...and beauty/grade is indeed in the eye of the beholder! Or is it "The Beholder"??