When you're collecting comic books, trading your comic books for other comic books that you want is somehow inevitable. Of course when you trade comic books, it's not just the fair trading that exists in utopia. Not everything in this world has the same value, and the same thing applies to comic books.
What Exactly Is Comic Book Grading?
Comic books have a certain grading scale that is crucial to know when you are collecting them. It is also important because knowing the right grade scale of a certain comic book will determine its real value. Grading of comic books is usually subjective, meaning that some comic books may have a high grade or value for other collectors while other people may put a low grade on them.
This subjective system of grading must be understood by any collector. Collectors look for a certain comic book title and of course when they are not interested with the comic book title you are trying to sell or trade then definitely they'll give a low mark.
Luckily, there are standardized categories for comic book grading; it's a scale that ranges from 1 to 10, taking 10 as the highest possible attainable point for any comic book. This scale is first based on the physical conditions of the comic book. If the books condition is from poor to fair, then definitely it is at the range of 1 to 5, conditions that range from fair to best is of course at the 6 to 10 range.
For the average readable comic, it will typically fall in the very good to the fine condition. But as you go up, there are certain nuances and variances on the categories of grading comic books, usually every single detail of the comic book will be considered. With this in mind, prices of comic books may range between 50 dollars to 5000 dollars depending on what category your comic book belongs to. So if you're collecting you have to educate yourself on what category your comic books fall and what are the factors that would necessarily change the value of your comic book.
How Grading Works On The Ground
Basically you could grade comic books. Of course, there are things that can be self taught, but most of the time in order to grade properly, consulting someone who is an authority to such trades would be good.
Most comic books will be graded by you as the collector, which is the reason why it is important that you educate yourself on what are the differences of a comic book that is in a very good condition to a very fine conditioned one. Because if you wanted to be known to be a good rater, then basically your credibility would go up, and usually your grading standards would be used by other collectors and investors.
There are a lot of available books which will guide you on properly grading your own comic books. But usually, these kinds of books only teach you of the fundamentals. Other books would basically teach you about the different categories of comic books and later on teach you on how to categorize them. As for any kind of trade, it comes with practice and as you go on with your grading of comic books, the experience would appear on how you will handle different scenarios.
Because as what has been said earlier, grading is purely subjective, therefore only experience will tell you how a certain detail on a comic book will affect its value. A common example would be time stamps on old comic books, some comic book collectors like them but most people don't like to see any other marks within the book. That's something you'll obviously just learn over time when you get more and more acquainted with the trade.
Different Grades Of Comic Books
The industry obviously has evolved with respect to its own grading standards. During the old times, the grading system is based only to 3 or 4, those numbers could mean good, fine or mint. Nowadays however, the comic book industry is now using the standard 10 point grading system in order to have a standard to all comic book collectors and investors around the world.
At the end of the day one thing is certain, experience is still the best teacher in comic book grading.
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