CGC Grading Contest

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Collectors and Dealers, are you ready to truly test your grading mettle? For the first time in the industry's history, you now have that chance. Classics Incorporated is proud to host the official 2010 CGC grading contest at San Diego Comic-Con, Wizard World Chicago, and New York Comic-Con. This is the only contest we will run this year, so participants from all three shows will be grading the same set of comics. Count on some heavy competition!

The rules are easy: grade 20 comics in 20 minutes. The cost: nothing if you are currently a subscriber of GPAnalysis.com! GPAnalysis will cover the usual $10 entry fee for all members of their website, and will pay half of that fee for non-subscribers who participate. The goal is easy too: try to score as close to zero as possible!

The 20 comics are hand picked by Matt Nelson and will cover a range of grades, genres and companies. None of the books will exhibit restoration. After all participants have taken the test at each of the three shows, the 20 comics will be submitted to CGC for grading Sunday, October 10th. The results of the contest will be announced about two weeks later, with only 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners announced. Each participant will have their own individual score and rank emailed to them...those results are kept confidential.

To some the contest may seem intimidating. Almost every person who took it in 2009 commented afterwards how fun it was. To others the contest is time consuming, but we have streamlined the process to where you are literally in and out in 20 minutes. No sweat! Whether you are curious about how your grading stacks up against CGC's, or you have a competitive streak in you, the CGC grading contest is something that everyone should compete in at least once.

The three shows where Classics Inc. will be holding the 2010 contest:
7/21 - 7/25   San Diego Comic-Con
8/19 - 8/22   Chicago Wizard World
10/8 - 10/10   New York Comic-Con

The rules:
1. Each grader has 20 minutes to grade 20 comics.
2. No Magnifying glasses or any other tools allowed during grading. Just the lamps we provide.
3. Every book is unrestored and has all pages and no coupons missing, so it is not necessary to count pages or check for restoration.
4. Additional defects found on any book will cause its rejection.
5. Anyone affiliated with Classics Inc, Worldwide Comics or CGC cannot compete.

The scoring:
For Scoring, zero is a perfect score, with points being added as follows:
grade variance = 1 point
page quality variance = 0.5 point
If no grade is chosen, there is a 5 point penalty
If no page quality is chosen, there is a 2 point penalty

Example:
Your grade: 9.0 white pages
CGC grade: 8.0 off-white to white pages
Score for book = 2.5