new grading guide dissapoints

[FlComicFan]

Finally got the new grading guide this week. After reading it cover to cover twice i have to say it reads as the same thing as the 1992 version but with the new 10 point system. Still confusing and not sure how it corroborates with CGC's grading standards. I have CGC slabbed books with defects not allowable in those grades according to the grading guide so does that mean its stricter than CGC? Wasting page after page of modern 10 and 9.9 comics was a waste of photos. Like you can see the difference from those small pics let alone examining the moderns yourself. The color pics were a marked improvement so I dont feel like I wasted the $24 totally. The restoration articles were almost like rhetoric to get the market to start buying restored books again. I'd rather they spent the pages giving me more info with pics on how to detect all the restoration as one can never have enough of this info. Enough pushing the Platinum Age stuff as well. There are like what 50 people who collect the era. With apologies to any of those who collect the stuff (more power to ya!) I've yet to meet anyone other than Robert Beerbohm who collects the stuff. I'be person_without_enough_empathyed enough what did everyone else think of it?

 

PS did you all catch the pedigree get special consideration when grading ? I dont care if its a Mile High or a book from Joe Blow it either merits its grade or doesnt.

[aardvark88]

Numerically, u may think a cgc 9.0 should be the same as another 9.0 of the same book. But this is false. e.g. Daredevil #1. Bidders want date/store stamps notated in the descripton of the auction item. Some copies have better color saturation. e.g. the whites are whiter, the red in the DD logo is redder.

Have not read the new grading guide yet, so no comment.

Let's start our own cgc forum grading guide. We have enough brains on this board , don't we?

[FlComicFan]

I think I need to sit down and reread and compare the 1992 version with the new. Only diff I see from memory is color flecks and minor printing/binding defects are a little stricter between 9.6-10.0 hence a CGC related update of the standards. Lower grade actually seems like the grading standards are less strict. Some of the "good" beater copies I accumulated of some Gold arguably could be vg according to the new guide. I'd love to see a CGC grading guide in print to have a comparison.

[fantastic_four]

Let's start our own cgc forum grading guide. We have enough brains on this board , don't we?

Almost. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the most advanced mind in comic book grading is some guy named "gifflefunk" who only posts on the EBay forums. I invited him to come here but he never responded. I knew it was a longshot, because he doesn't collect high grade and doesn't much like CGC. I wanted him to come here because the EBay forum posting software sucks BIG time.

 

He has talked of making his own grading guide...I hope he does it, because he's applied scientific method to grading moreso than anybody else I've ever seen.

[duncan36]

Overall the guide is well done with a critical flaw that ruins the whole book, the pictures have to be bigger, how they claim to be the end-all guide to grading comics when the pictures are too small to see a lot of the defects is puzzling. Surely this is something that would have come up when they were discussing the book.

I've heard the complaints about printing price, but thats rather silly, either the book shows pictures that are adequate for determining grade or it doesn't, and this book doesnt.

[Arty]

I think they should supply a picture cd with that book. (with huge scans, like Heritage auctions)

Or simply replace a paper-version altogether with a cd-grading guide.

 

 

 

[aardvark88]

Overstreet is probably saving the cd rom grading guide for update # 3 future retail sales.

[fantastic_four]

Gemstone seems to be somewhat Luddite (anti-technology) when it come to electronic publishing. You'd think they'd have created an electronic Overstreet by now, but nope.

[Tomega]

I thought the $24.95 plus tax was a rip off, it was not all that impressive and the first 1/3 of the book seemed to be mostly ads. However, I found that Buy.com had it for $15.17 with free shipping so I ordered it - this is what the list price should have been for it.

Tom

[supapimp]

yeah, they are bending us over on the price, im glad i haven't bought a copy. i just wonder if it's good reading while your on the can taking the kids to the pool?

[fantastic_four]

EXCELLENT reading while on the can. Simply excellent; the short grading examples are great short-term time fillers. You can probably look over 2 or 3 grading examples during a trip, or maybe 5 or 6 if you had jalapeno chili that day.

[blowout]

I thought the guide was a good read. The addition of the number range of defects allowable in each grade was also usefull. I do agree that the pictures are too small to really see the defects. The idea of a cd of large scans of the books is great. Are you reading this Arnoldt?

We either need the scans or the book needs to be double the dimensions it currently is.

I can see why they tried to make it a small 'pocketbook' so that collectors can carry it to convensions etc more easily. But whats the point if you can't refer to the pics properly?

[Illiterati-migration]

I agree with the suggested changes thus far, but I really have to take issue with the title of the thread. It doesn't "disappoint"... that's FAR too negative a thing to say about the book. There are things I would have changed, and I think the idea of a thread suggesting such changes would be a great idea... but this is title is just too loaded to be in any way productive.

 

That being said, I too would have liked to see some up-close shots of the flaws on these books. Most of the time there's an arrow pointing at a flaw... but it can't be seen because of the small, small picture! When I created my "technical manual" for a class last semester and I made a grading guide (only ended up being 22 pages, so it was FAR less comprehensive)... but I would post a picture of the cover, then I would have the various flaws cropped and enlarged on the accompanying pages. I'm not saying that's the way to do it, but something like that would be very nice. (Especially when you're dealing with qualitative terms like "slight" and "minor"...)

[FlComicFan]

Great idea! Larger pics or the cdr to blow them up on your PC would have helped but the main point is its dissapointing and I stand by it. I paid $24 and I got a few small pics a few articles of the same pontificating about restoration and really didnt learn anything new. I dont feel I will be any more versed as a grader after reading this and its not even really an effective grading reference tool. The allowable defects by grade are still confusing and overlapping. Is it worth $24? For me the answer is its not worth $10 because its a basically a rehash of the 1992 version with color pics added. If you are a novice maybe it would be different and you can pick up some grading knowledge at least in the lower grades where the defects are somewhat visible in the small color pics. It didnt even have an Owl card geesh.

[Illiterati-migration]

Yeah, the lack of OWL was a little annoying/strange. And it IS still confusing (as far as the overlap in grades are concerned), but I also tend to think that a little ambiguity in a hobby like this is better than rules etched in stone... the small amount of ambiguity leaves room for endless possibility. I don't want to live in fear of a harsh CGC regime!

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

I'm sorry to say that "silly" or not, it's simply the reason. There was no cost effective way to produce a book with this level of printing quality in full color and go any larger than we did. It would have been a prohibitive expense.

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

No plans for any such project, sorry.

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

Oh I'm reading. I just can't help you with the CD, there just won't be one. And as I already said elsewhere, this was as large a book as we could do without turning off the heat in the office and sitting here in barrels. Color and high quality paper ain't cheap.

 

After ten years of everybody complaining that the first Grading Guide showed everything in black and white, I knew two things - one, that the full color in the new Guide would instantly attract people and elicit waves of praise for finally doing justice to the pictures. And two, shortly thereafter, people would find something else to complain about. It was, of course, inevitable.

[FlyingDonut]

A general Overstreet question - has there every been any thought given to making the big book available electronically?

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

I know *I've* given it thought for many years personally. It is of course the obvious way to go for any such publication - to be honest, it *was* the obvious way to go, and now the obvious way would be fully online. But anyway, the answer I've given for many years still stands for good or ill - there are currently no plans to produce an electronic version of the Guide any time soon.