A Complete Glossary Of Comic Book Condition Abbreviations

Buying and selling comic books is more complicated than one would expect. The buyer needs to know exactly what condition each book is in, as the slightest imperfection can have a major impact on value.

You might be familiar with general grading terms like Mint (MT), Very Good (VG), and Poor (PR). What you might not be aware of, however, is that there are many more gradients on the scale, each with their own abbreviations and highly specific conditions.

FbTT - Flawless, but all text has been sloppily covered in white-out and rewritten by hand in Turkish.

MSD - Minor sledgehammer damage.

PV - Perpetually vibrating.

1KPCT - All inner pages removed, replaced with uncut sheets of $1000 bills. Cover has slight tear which renders book worthless.

FiJF - Floating in a jar of formaldehyde.

XOXO - Kissed dozens of times. No visible lip prints but trust me they're there.

NWSCF - Nothing wrong that a little spackle can't fix.

SBCAT - Staples bent due to prolonged exposure inside a CAT scan machine and a quick exposure inside a staple bending machine.

USMBD - A urine stain has miraculously formed the shape of Big Dog, the big dog from Big Dog t-shirt fame.

EPHFP - Every page is an advertisement for Hostess fruit pies.

RUSSoTO - Has been rolled up and used to swat spiders on three occasions.

ASV - A shattered vase. Its loose shards sort of look like the rough approximation of a comic book when peered at through squinted eyes.

SH - Slightly haunted.

CMCW - One corner missing after being caught in a collapsing wormhole.

LCBHbOP - Multiple large caliber bullet holes but otherwise pristine.

GL - Drawn by Greg Land and therefore completely valueless.

SW - Converted into a sandwich, with a slice of meat, lettuce, or tomato between every page.

ROvS - Run over by a steamroller, becoming ten times larger in surface (and still perfectly legible) but razor thin. When dropped, will lazily flutter to the ground like a leaf.

FiPB - Literally a frog in a polyethylene bag.

NRIM - When looked at in a mirror, this book does not have a reflection.

PBW - Blessed by the Pope, slight holy water damage.

COTMS - Cover obscured by a complete chalk outline of a body from the world's tiniest murder scene.

MR - Minimal dusting of ricin.

HCZ - Cover torn in half, didn't have any tape so it's held together with a functioning zipper.

OBV - Pages 12-18 missing for obvious reasons.

RAD - Deadly levels of radiation and remarkable ink color retention.

Holo - This is a hologram. Not a comic with a shiny holographic cover. A genuine sci-fi hologram. You can't pick it up or touch it at all. Even after a thorough search you cannot locate the device that's projecting the hologram.

HSLL - Contains a very embarrassing high school love letter that I forgot to remove.

OrigBbs - The pages of this comic have been carefully removed, then folded with remarkable precision and crafted via origami into 24 pairs of boobs as envisioned by a teenager that hasn't actually seen a boob.

FZ - Covered in light peach fuzz, with several coarse ingrown hairs.

HTI - Completely covered with human tooth indentations. These did not come from someone that was trying to eat the book, but a licensed comic grade inspector that was biting the comic to verify its authenticity.

PHS - Perfect as long as it's held still. This comic should not be shaken or even rotated on any axis, or all the art and lettering will fall out.

– Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (@DennisFarrell)