The Ovverstreet Grading Guide is a good book, but....... I agree with with other reviews on this book. What i would have liked to see from it was exactly haw many points do you take of for a certian defect. For example, If i have a MINT 100 with a 1/4 inch corner crease on front cover, how many points would i take off, what if it was on the rear cover, would it be the same? They give examples of books but don't realy tell you how they came up with the points for the book.
Informative but still greatly lacking.... Pictures are in black and white so cannot clearly determine what actual defects are. Does not leave you much more confident when you go to grade comics. They just show a black and white photo for each grade (from 100pt system). Book makes you feel like grading is SO subjective that no three collectors could ever agree exactly on a books condition. I would suggest the next version of this book use the 10 pt system and only use color pictures even if book is more expensive. It also does not tell me how to grade special cases like: NM book with ad cut out, NM book with page missing, etc. It would help to have a chapter to cover these sorts of things also, so reader gets good grading "coverage" of real-world issues. Should also better cover how internal pages affect grading (other than pages being supple or brown/tan). This book focuses only cover grading, so assumes internal pages are intact, no tears, etc. Book could also point to pictures on web site for those interested in even greater detail which requires more photos.
Useful but very limited You will learn somewhat about grading comics from this book but it's usefulness is not as claimed. Almost the entire book consists of photos of comics and sample defects. But in almost all cases the defects are not visible or discernable in the photos! So why bother with over 250 pages of photos that are not good enough to see what they are supposed to be showing? They should have either used high quality photos that can be seen or just list the defects.
Also, in many cases they will point to a defect and say "see glossary". Then it won't be in the glossary! For instance, "bindery tear (see glossary)" and then there is no "bindery tear" or "tear, bindery" in the glossary.
One more thing: they claim to have a 100 point system for grading comics but then don't make it clear what the actual difference between close gradings are. For instance, the difference between 100 and 99 and 98 is not all together clear.
Like I said, you can learn a little about grading from this book but don't expect it to be a great grading book. Considering Overstreet's reputation I am amazed at how much improvement this book needs.
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