A Grading Experiment

My Experience: 

I have no real experience in grading books. I can certainly look at a book and tell the difference between a low and high grade book. However, I do not have the confidence to look at a book and differentiate or assign a 9.4, 9.6, or 9.8 grade.  

My Experiment Methodology: 

• I bought a 'graded' book from a LCS that I wanted to compare against the grading tool housed at www.comicbookrealm.com (CBR)
• I have no knowledge of the grading experience of the individual at the LCS so just using what they provided as a baseline.
• I also don't know if the CBR tool covers everything related to grading (you don't know what you don't know) 

The Victim: 

• Amazing Spider-Man #316 - First Cover Appearance of Venom 
• Graded as FN+ (6.5) 

The Process: 

• The grading tool at CBR can be found as an option at the top masthead of the website 
• It contains 38 steps that will take you 5-10 minutes based on how long you go through the images 
• I think having grading experience or simple knowledge of grading categories will make the process much smoother 

A Couple Imperfections: 

• I documented several key defects of the book; some lifting when laying flat, cream internal pages, and some corner bends of internal pages. 

The Verdict: 

• After taking an honest approach through the 38 steps I came up with a rating of 6.0 - very close to the grade from the store
• I had an 8.0 for quite a while until the topic of spine roll and flatness of the book came into play - this dropped it all the way to 6.0 
• This was a big drop, however, it makes me think that I can improve the rating one day with a good pressing (now I just have to figure out how to do that or pay to have it done) 
• Fun exercise but I still think it would be hard to differentiate between NM books 
• Next Step: At some point I plan to purchase the Overstreet grading book just to learn more about the overall technique