Comic Book Grading
Comic books have come a long way from when I started collecting. I remember buying some of my favorite Spider-man comics off the rack and I still get that same nostalgia when I find a nice copy of those books. One of those specific books for me is Amazing Spider-man Volume 1 number 315. Every time I see the cover of that book it takes me back to high school.
When you are looking to invest in a book you need to go beyond “it looks nice” and try to assign a grade to it. There are to are two types of grading scales that most people will refence when grading a comic book or most other collectables as well. Here are the two scales.
Basic Comic Book Grading Scale
The basic grading scale uses just letters and starts at NM – Near Mint to PR Poor
When buying comics that are not officially graded by a third-party grading company, these are the general accepted terms used to talk about the condition of books.
o NM Near Mint
o VF Very Fine
o FN Fine
o VG Very Good
o GD Good
o FR Fair
o PR Poor
The Ten-point Comic Book grading scale
The more expensive a comic book is, the more critical the condition of book. Just a few bends on the spine or a crease on the cover will take the book from a NM to a VF. The highest grade on the ten-point scale is obviously and 10 and the lowest is a .5. As the CGC grading scale states, a Gem Mint CGC 10.0 is "The highest grade assigned. The collectible must have no evidence of any manufacturing or handling defects." As of January 2022, there are 6,977,732 comic book entries on the CGC census. Of those, there are 7,146 CGC 10.0 listings, or 0.1% of the total. On the other side an Amazing Fantasy 15, which is Spider-man’s first appearance, has a FMV (fair market value) of $16,500 for a CGC graded .5. Here is what the ten-point system looks like.
o 10.0 GM Gem Mint
o 9.9 M Mint
o 9.8 NM/M Near Mint/Mint
o 9.6 NM+ Near Mint+
o 9.4 NM Near Mint
o 9.2 NM- Near Mint-
o 9.0 VF/NM Very Fine/Near Mint
o 8.5 VF+ Very Fine+
o 8.0 VF Very Fine
o 7.5 VF- Very Fine-
o 7.0 FN/VF Fine/Very Fine
o 6.5 FN+ Fine+
o 6.0 FN Fine
o 5.5 FN- Fine-
o 5.0 VG/FN Very Good/Fine
o 4.5 VG+ Very Good+
o 4.0 VG Very Good
o 3.5 VG- Very Good-
o 3.0 GD/VG Good/Very Good
o 2.5 GD+ Good+
o 2.0 GD Good
o 1.8 GD- Good-
o 1.5 FR/GD Fair/Good
o 1.0 FR Fair
o 0.5 PR Poor
Comic book grading companies are a good way confirm the value of your book, here is a link to the most popular. Comic book Grading Companies
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