Excellent vs Beautiful

[Lucid Harbinger]

Hello everyone! This is my first post, so before I get to my question, let me say that a month ago I started collecting again after a hiatus of a few years, and while I knew about TFL's archive, the store was a surprise. Discovered it after winning a TFL auction on eBay, and it's very impressive. I look forward to becoming a customer.

Now, a question about the store... Is there generally any difference between 'excellent' and 'beautiful' (or 'NEAR MINT') beyond comments made in the item's description?

For example, take this description: "Complete, c9 (light sticker wear, otherwise excellent)". If I were to buy that and replace all the stickers with Reprolabels, would the result be reasonably equivalent to the same item listed as "NEAR MINT (beautiful!)"? Or does the 'excellent' imply that the item is generally not as good as one that's 'beautiful', and 'light sticker wear' is simply the most notable reason why?

Thanks!

[LD2062]

I consider description scale to go in this order:

MINT
beautiful
near mint
excellent
very good
good
pretty good
decent/fair
poor
parts

Of course thats only the way I think they should go.

[Lucid Harbinger]

Thanks, LD2062. That doesn't actually answer my question, though, but I figured it out when I noticed that some figures were listed as c9 (excellent) without any comments. Which I guess means there is indeed a difference between 'excellent' and 'beautiful' beyond any listed comments.

And now that leads to the obvious question: What sorts of little things, not worthy enough to be mentioned, might make an item 'excellent' instead of 'beautiful'?

[trance]

Hi there!

I run the store and make the descriptions...if something is marked as BEAUTIFUL, you should expect the chrome, paint, coloration, stickers, etc. to have only minor wear, if any. These figures are in the top 5% quality-wise of figures I've had since I began selling back in '97.

Excellent figures might have noticeable wear on stickers, or on paint or on chrome, but it would be considered 'light'. These figure would rank in the top 80% - 95%...

So in summary, Beautiful > Excellent

Typically 'excellent' would be for c8-9 and c9 figures, while 'beautiful' would be for c9-NEAR MINT and NEAR MINT figures. Hope that helps!