I am sure many of us Graham Cracker employees have gotten a call in of someone inquiring about a certain book, and if the answer is \u201cYeah I got a one in stock\u201d, the next question is usually \u201cWhat\u2019s the grade?\u201d. There are quite a few reasons on why people look to see what a book\u2019s grade\/condition is before even thinking about purchasing them. One is a big one if it is a high grade and a big book can I make a profit on it? And yes, depending on the book and how highly sought after it is you can make a profit. Another reason is a person\u2019s price range, do they want higher graded books for their collection and do not mind spending more, or do they just want to own the book and will go for a lower grade. Now these are probably the two biggest reasons, but there are more like someone will get a lower grade and clean and press it themselves to make it a better grade, either for practice or again for their own collection.<\/p>\n
My stand on this is quite simple, I\u2019m not a big stickler on grade. I collect the first run of Amazing Spider-man books there are a lot of Amazing (yes pun intended) and old books in this run, so it\u2019s easy to say that a large majority of these early issues are beat up (and expensive).<\/p>\n
The most important thing for me is that I\u2019m able to get a certain book into my collection would I like to have a high grade, and be able to open it up and read it?<\/p>\n
Of course, who doesn\u2019t love reading some Stan Lee goodness, while enjoying amazing Steve Ditko or John Romita art.<\/p>\n
However, searching and being able to afford these nice books can take a long time to do, and I\u2019m to impatient to wait that long. So, what I do is if I find a lower grade copy of a book that is missing in the collection, I\u2019ll buy it and then to be able to still read it I get a book that collects a majority of these issues and read them. Now what do I mean by this, well if you\u2019re not familiar with books such as omnibuses they are big books that will have 40-50 issues of say a series like Amazing Spider-man.<\/p>\n
So, you can read these awesome and old books in even better quality they were printed in while still owning and original copy yourself.<\/p>\n
Now many of us collect and buy comics for this one big reason we all have in common; we love to read them and take in a great story. I mentioned things like omnibuses which can help with collecting and reading, but for every one of me with this idea there are hundreds who have a different one. For some the book can be beat up, but as long as the pages are readable and not falling apart it doesn\u2019t matter. With some it\u2019s the opposite they want that higher grade book with the great page quality and read that one, and why do they do this? Well for the same reason many of us are excited for Wednesday to fall around, so we can read these amazing stories and then talk about them with others who do (or don\u2019t) feel the same way.<\/p>\n
Now before I continue on, I\u2019ve been saying condition and grade well if you\u2019re not well versed on what a book\u2019s \u201cgrade\u201d is well it\u2019s basically the condition of the book, but it\u2019s assigned a number from a 10 or 9.9 being the highest but are very rare so 9.8 is basically a perfect copy. To a .5 being the lowest. Why is this important? Well because like I said earlier the biggest question, we\u2019re usually asked is what a books grade is. With many they want that high grade, they want that 9.8 to either keep the collection immaculate and sell it one day, or it\u2019s just for them something their proud of. But the book can have a medium to low grade and for most it\u2019s not important BUT if the book itself presents well that low grade isn\u2019t important. For example, I have an Amazing Spider-man #300, great book first full appearance of Venom, the 300th issue, 25th anniversary of Spider-man, and an incredible cover by Todd McFarlane. The grade on my Spidey 300 is about a 7.0 if you really inspect it, but the book presents at a 9.0. So, I have this incredible issue of my all-time favorite series to collect, it\u2019s mid-grade and a bit more affordable, presents great, and if I chose to, I could read this copy without worrying about anything falling out, all this because looking for that 9.8 wasn\u2019t my top priority. With how long I\u2019ve been going this is still just a small amount of examples on the importance of condition. This is such a huge subject in the comic community that it can take hours on discussing (but this article needs to stop at some point). But, in the long run the most important on a books condition is how you feel about it, how you want your collection to look at the end of the day. So I hope when you call your favorite Graham Crackers comic shop and ask if we have that special book the answer will be yes, and with that thanks for reading keep collecting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am sure many of us Graham Cracker employees have gotten a call in of someone inquiring about a certain book, and if the answer is \u201cYeah I got a one in stock\u201d, the next question is usually \u201cWhat\u2019s the grade?\u201d. There are quite a few reasons on why people look to see what a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"yoast_head":"\n