Welcome to the Spider-Man (and all comics for that matter!) Grading Guide!

Please get acquainted with the way Comic Books are graded and the criteria used in the several grades a Comic Book can come in. This area of Comic Book collecting is extremely important and should not be taken lightly. Only through years of experience, can one fully learn how to grade.

Grading comics is an art though, and not and not a science. There will always be differences in opinion concerning the grades assigned to comics they buy and sell. Even the most experienced collectors and dealers learn something new from time to time concerning grading comics.

Middle grades are always the most difficult to grade. The lines of demarcation between a high end of a grade of Fair (or lower grade), and the low end of a grade of Good (or a grade one step higher) can be the area of most difficulty.

There are many categories of Grading, which include the main grades above, plus half grades such as VG/F, F/VF, VF/NM, and so on. ='s and -'s can also be assigned as quarter values such as VF-, or VG+. The values associated with these grades go up or down slightly.

The terms, examples, and guidance on this site come from the very handy Overstreet Comic Book Grading Guide, by Gemstone Publishing. It is very recommended that a copy of this guide is obtained, especially for the very serious collector. Of note: There will be a new Grading Guide due out by the end of this year with help from the Comics Guarantee Corporation, a company that grades Comic Books for a fee, and helped redefine grading over the last couple of years.

Lastly, page color is also taken into consideration when grading a comic. Many use what is termed the OWL scale, from 0-10. OWL stands for Overstreet's Whiteness Level, and denotes the quality of page whiteness a comic has. 10 being snow-white, to 0 being brittle, and about to crumble.

An image of the OWL card is represented below in thumbnail view. Print out a copy of the larger one for yourself:

Any other information that anyone deems valuable to this area, please send me an E-Mail.