What are the general cutoff points for high, mid and low grade? 2 2

[FSF]

1 hour ago, VintageComics said:

I can show you 7.0 books that look better than some 8.5's - it's going to depend on the book and the defects - that's why I specifically said VF range and not necessarily a particular grade.

Grade should be irrelevant of era.

High grade is high grade regardless of how old the book is. If a book is a 5.0 or a 6.0 I consider it mid grade even if it's a Tec #27.

But being tough in grade, and being a highest grade copy for a tough book (like and early Tec) is an entirely different matter.

 

As my OP stated, I agree with you that grade is irrelevant of era.  I think the way to look at it is that virtually all modern books are high grade (even if they are "only" 9.0 and no one wants it) and virtually all GA books are low grade.

 

[roach04]

11 hours ago, valiantman said:

There's no arguing with the "beauty" aspect of what's high grade, mid grade, etc... so that's not what I'm going to post.

What I'm posting is the CGC Census info related to where the cut-offs would be if you decided that the "top X% of CGC graded copies" would be the place to make the call... and it definitely makes a difference if we're talking 1930s or 1990s.

 

Great chart!  Man I love the way you compile data.  The 1980s on - zero surprise here.  I am stunned that the median for 1960s books is 8.0.  

Edited November 9, 2017 by roach04
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[rjpb]

Low grade - under 4.0  , though generally anything under 1.8 I would refer to a very low grade.

Mid grade - 4.0- 7.5   (6.5 - 7.5 as upper mid grade)

High grade 8.0 and up ( with 9.6 and above being very high grade - except for random low value moderns, which I only buy raw and just describe everything from a 9.4 on up as NM).

It's tough to completely divorce from the age of the book, even though a grade should be a grade, regardless of era. In part because despite this expectations are different.  A 6.5 comic from the golden age can look just stunning and better than any other copy one may have seen, but still have minor flaws which keep the grade down and would be unacceptable to collector of modern books. It may not be "high grade" in an absolute sense, but can be hard to think of as merely mid grade compared to other copies so defined. Conversely a collector of modern books might dismiss a 6.5 as being "low grade", when anything below a 9.6 isn't even slab worthy.

 

 

 

[Gatsby77]

7 hours ago, VintageComics said:

I can show you 7.0 books that look better than some 8.5's - it's going to depend on the book and the defects - that's why I specifically said VF range and not necessarily a particular grade.

Grade should be irrelevant of era.

High grade is high grade regardless of how old the book is. If a book is a 5.0 or a 6.0 I consider it mid grade even if it's a Tec #27.

But being tough in grade, and being a highest grade copy for a tough book (like and early Tec) is an entirely different matter.

 

I get it.

You're objective about it where I'm subjective.

But you also addressed only part of my example.

I'll stick with subjectivity because no one is going to convince me that a 9.2 copy of X-Force # 1 or a 9.0 copy of Walking Dead # 27 is "high grade."

(At least for the next decade or so. After 2030? We'll see.)

[Martin Sinescu]

2 hours ago, Gatsby77 said:

I get it.

You're objective about it where I'm subjective.

But you also addressed only part of my example.

I'll stick with subjectivity because no one is going to convince me that a 9.2 copy of X-Force # 1 or a 9.0 copy of Walking Dead # 27 is "high grade."

(At least for the next decade or so. After 2030? We'll see.)

Absolutely agree. I think it's unrealistic to try to hold books that are several decades apart in age to the same standard of "high" grade. You really ought to factor in conditions such as the survivability rate of the era, quality of materials used, how carefully books from that era were preserved, etc. The terms high, mid and low themselves are subjective (unless you just split the scale into thirds), so we'll probably all differ a little, but if I see someone calling a modern book "high grade" at a 9.0, I'm not going to take them very seriously. That's mid-grade for me on anything produced this century.

I'm a little looser than Gatsby, but not much -- 9.4 would be my cutoff for "high grade" on current books until back in the late 80's. Between there and early 80's/late 70's is around NM-. Going back to early Bronze it's probably more like VF/NM as the bottom floor, VF+ for late Silver, VF- for early Silver and into GA. This is basically how I apply "high grade" to my collecting goal of putting together a run of "high grade" books.

[VintageComics]

18 hours ago, Readcomix said:

The .2 thing bothers me because it somehow only exists north of 9.0.

There's a good reason for that.

Values can fluctuate wildly in the highest grades so the small designations become a necessity.

For example, a CGC 9.0 book might sell for $5000 but a 9.2 might sell for $10,000 and a 9.4 for $15,000 so just labeling them as 0.5 apart may not be as feasible for the market.

Meanwhile the differences in prices are not as large for a 6.5 to 7.0 swing.

But don't look at it as 0.2 degrees of separation. Just look at it as separating the top grades into finer increments. You could have separated them by 0.5's if you wanted to but then that would not leave many increments left for the lowest end of the grading scale as the 7 increments from 9.0 to 10.0 would have taken you down to 6.5 if that makes sense.

I'm OK with it.

[VintageComics]

8 hours ago, Martin Sinescu said:

I think it's unrealistic to try to hold books that are several decades apart in age to the same standard of "high" grade.

I think it's unrealistic to call a low grade book 'high grade' when it isn't. It might be a 'highest grade available' but it's not high grade.

So you'd really need to call it something subjective like 'highest grade available' to be accurate. Otherwise it's illogical.

[VintageComics]

18 hours ago, FSF said:

and virtually all GA books are low grade.

There are PLENTY of high grade GA books (some even grade 9.8 or 9.9). They are just tougher to find, but they are out there.

The recent Jon Berk CC auction had plenty of NM range GA books in it.

[FSF]

1 minute ago, VintageComics said:

There are PLENTY of high grade GA books (some even grade 9.8 or 9.9). They are just tougher to find, but they are out there.

The recent Jon Berk CC auction had plenty of NM range GA books in it.

I don't doubt at all that there are high grade GA books to be had.  The census is proof of that. But I have to believe that there are in a tiny minority of all the entire population of GA books that are in existence. 

[VintageComics]

Just now, FSF said:

4 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

There are PLENTY of high grade GA books (some even grade 9.8 or 9.9). They are just tougher to find, but they are out there.

The recent Jon Berk CC auction had plenty of NM range GA books in it.

I don't doubt at all that there are high grade GA books to be had.  The census is proof of that. But I have to believe that there are in a tiny minority of all the entire population of GA books that are in existence. 

Sure, they exist in smaller numbers but that is a different discussion than the one about high grade vs. low grade.

The highest graded Detective #27 is a 9.2. The nicest Marvel Comics #1 in likely to grade a CGC 9.8. The nicest Cap #1 is a CGC 9.8

So the argument that GA books are high grade at what a SA book is mid grade at is not really a logical discussion.

Also, most of the old timers who collect these books will likely also tell you that even if the highest graded copy of a GA book is a VF 4.0, it's still a low or mid-grade book. Being scarce or in limited supply just change it's grade.

[FSF]

As for trying to define high grade by era, the grade is the grade.  It's either high grade or it isn't.  Where that line gets drawn universally is debatable but the actual grade isn't.

We don't say that a kid who wasn't born very bright but manage to work very hard to get a 'C' in math somehow got an 'A' because he did the very best s/he could and 'C' was the ceiling of talent.  It's a 'C' no matter who got it.

 

[FSF]

1 minute ago, VintageComics said:

Sure, they exist in smaller numbers but that is a different discussion than the one about high grade vs. low grade.

The highest graded Detective #27 is a 9.2. The nicest Marvel Comics #1 in likely to grade a CGC 9.8. The nicest Cap #1 is a CGC 9.8

So the argument that GA books are high grade at what a SA book is mid grade at is not really a logical discussion.

Also, most of the old timers who collect these books will likely also tell you that even if the highest graded copy of a GA book is a VF 4.0, it's still a low or mid-grade book. Being scarce or in limited supply just change it's grade.

Maybe I'm reading you're post wrong but you seem to be preaching to the choir.  I'm completely in your camp in that regard.  In fact, it seems like you are agreeing with my post that virtually all GA books are low grade.  I never stated that ALL of them were, but "virtually all". 

 

[comicdonna]

Saying virtually all GA books are low grade is a long way from the truth. 

[valiantman]

12 minutes ago, comicdonna said:

Saying virtually all GA books are low grade is a long way from the truth. 

I think there's reason to believe that the majority of comics which became low grade at some point in the past 50+ years were trashed (literally discarded and gone forever).  So, we're only talking about survivors and they're likely to be mid-grade... not "trash" (to the untrained eye) as often as low grade.  Virtually all GA books are lower than low grade.  They're gone forever.  The survivors are "hill shaped" with a few in high grade, more in the middle, and tapering down on the low side because "trash" (to the untrained eye) didn't merit saving.

Edited November 9, 2017 by valiantman

[comicdonna]

Just now, valiantman said:

I think there's reason to believe that the majority of comics which became low grade at some point in the past 50+ years were trashed (literally discarded and gone forever).  So, we're only talking about survivors and they're likely to be mid-grade... not "trash" (to the untrained eye) as often as low grade.

Books that are gone forever don't count in the comic collecting hobby.  They don't exist. 

[FSF]

14 minutes ago, comicdonna said:

Saying virtually all GA books are low grade is a long way from the truth. 

Fair enough.  I'm by no means an expert, and to be quite honest, I was really thing that there are virtually no high grade GA books which leaves possibly a fair amount of mid grade books as possibilities.   But based on the census totals (being that they are submitting the best books available), I'm not entirely convinced of that. And of course we can debate as to the percentage that defines "virtually all". 

[valiantman]

9 minutes ago, comicdonna said:

Books that are gone forever don't count in the comic collecting hobby.  They don't exist. 

True, but the reason they don't exist is that they were deemed "trash" in the past.  

They weren't trashed because they were pristine.  They were trashed because they looked like trash.  It takes a "mid grade" for survival, if someone is deciding what to do with them.  If they're just throwing out comics, then all conditions are lost.  But if they're deciding whether to throw out comics, it takes at least a mid-grade to be saved.

Edited November 9, 2017 by valiantman

[VintageComics]

3 hours ago, valiantman said:

True, but the reason they don't exist is that they were deemed "trash" in the past.  

They weren't trashed because they were pristine.  They were trashed because they looked like trash.  It takes a "mid grade" for survival, if someone is deciding what to do with them.  If they're just throwing out comics, then all conditions are lost.  But if they're deciding whether to throw out comics, it takes at least a mid-grade to be saved.

It depends on why they are thrown out. I would agree that many were thrown out because they were low grade but not all were.

My parents threw out comics because they gave me nightmares. Some were thrown out because they were throw away items.

[comicdonna]

I'm guessing there was many 9'8's lost in the mass burnings. 

[VintageComics]

11 hours ago, comicdonna said:

I'm guessing there was many 9'8's lost in the mass burnings. 

Or staple and paper drives during WW 2