leo612•23d ago

My buddy roasted my comic grading system and I had to rethink everything

So I've been collecting comics for like 8 years now and I always graded my own stuff with this weird 1-10 scale I made up in my head. I was real proud of it too until my friend Dave who works at a shop in Portland looked at my stack and straight up said "your 9.0 is someone else's 7.0, you're just guessing based on how you feel about the cover art." That hit me hard because he was right. I'd been calling a beat up copy of X-Men #266 a 9.0 just because I loved the Gambit debut so much. After that I sat down with the official CGC grading guide and realized I had no clue what spine ticks, color breaks, and page quality actually meant. Now I grade everything against their standards even if I'm not sending them in for slabbing. Has anyone else had to completely rebuild their grading system after getting called out like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

bens8122d ago

My buddy Tom swore his beat-up Hulk #181 was an 8.0 till a grader laughed and said it was closer to a 4.5.

samwalker22d ago

Is that the same Tom who kept his comics in a damp basement?

margaret9922d ago

lol that's rough but honestly, Dave did you a favor. I had the same wake up call when I brought a stack to a local con and the vendor offered me like a third of what I thought they were worth. What helped me was actually buying a cheap magnifying glass and going through the CGC guide page by page with some beat up dollar bin comics. Once I started looking for specific things like corner wear and staple rust instead of just "looks nice" it clicked way better.