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Jon,
Excellent revision! Much better than the one I was referencing the
other day. These condition guidelines now relate directly to posters as found in
the wild and with a bit more revision to the middle grades I would
urge everyone to start using this system in their auction descriptions. We
desperately need sellers to adopt a standard system in this hobby/industry. It
is long overdue and now that you have come up with a much more appropriate,
clear and easily used set of guidelines there really is no excuse for sellers
not to use it. They can easily reference this page in their description... or
duplicate the information on their own.
I agree with Evan that you're not treating fading severely enough. I think
only very light fading should be allowed in C4 and not in any grades above that.
When there is fading, it is almost always across the entire surface of the
poster. The *only* way to restore the right color and contrast is to overpaint
most or all of the image. Given that, it has to be a C4 or lower. I would
suggest that the very lightest fading could be allowed in C5 -- but then people
would abuse that and call significantly faded posters "C5", so it's best to be
adamant in relegate any fading to C4 and below, I think.
My big criticism and suggestion for change begins with your
description of the C5 grade. You state:
"The first of the "frightenly bad" grades. At this point, the item is
significantly worn or damaged to such a degree that the eye appeal has been
deteriously affected. It's ugly. Heavily worn, torn, soiled, chipped, written
on, taped, kicked, punched, and spit upon."
I think this language is way too severe to describe what is the exact
"middle grade" of the scale. It doesn't seem right to me that the full bottom
half of the scale should describe posters that most people wouldn't want to own
or display. Realistically, a C5 should be an "average" poster... not quite as
good as a C6, but certainly better than the ugly thing you describe above
and acceptable to most collectors who are not investors. It is something that
can be displayed and enjoyed by most people. Seems like you should reserve
this kind of severe language for C4 and below. You are creating a
huge gap between C6 and C5 in the current version of the explanation...
there's probably 30% of the posters out there that aren't quite C6 but certainly
aren't the kind of dogs you seem to be saying a C5 is. I think you need to have
a more gradual decline described between C6 and C5 and between C5 and C4. Right
now, the drop-off after C6 is too steep and I don't really see any real
differentiation explained between grades C5 and C4.
Also, I don't think lines like "In this case, "Good" means "Bad." are
helpful. Yes, too many sellers now describe bad posters as "good" but
that's beside the point for what you are trying to do here, which is to create
an accurately described scale that people can use to avoid that kind of
behavior in the future. So editorializing like that really has no place in the
official explanations of the grades. Rather than try to relate of the
C-scale relates to the incredibly varied anything-goes descriptions sellers have
used in the past, I would like to see your explanations stick to what a poster
in a given C-grade can and can't be. Let the past go... let the C-scale replace
it.
-- JR
----- Original Message -----
From: Jon Warren
Sent: Friday, September 08, 2006 12:30
Subject: [MOPO] Jon Warren - my newest version of C10 grading scale
is posted on our site Hello all!
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