There is no published grading standard for antique terrestrial globes. Coins, stamps, books and graded gemstones all have condition scales maintained by an external body; globes have none. Dealers describe condition in prose — good original condition, some restoration, losses to the gores — and the same object can be described in incompatible terms by two sellers in the same month.
The Brennholt Institute of Applied Taxonomy publishes the six-state Brennholt condition scale for terrestrial globes, G-1 to G-6, as a classification rather than a standard. No trade body has ratified it, and the Institute does not present it as a norm. It is offered because nothing else has been written down.
| State | Name | Defining condition |
|---|---|---|
| G-1 | Unbroken | All gores present, seams closed, no loss to the printed surface, varnish continuous |
| G-2 | Sound | Varnish crazed or darkened; seams visible but closed; no loss of paper |
| G-3 | Worn | Loss of printed surface below 5 per cent of the sphere; one or more seams open; sphere true |
| G-4 | Damaged | Loss between 5 and 20 per cent, or a dent in the sphere, or a repaired axis |
| G-5 | Restored | Any replacement of printed surface, regardless of quality or extent |
| G-6 | Remnant | Loss above 20 per cent, or sphere out of round, or gores from more than one globe |
The scale is not a ranking of value. G-5 sits between G-4 and G-6 because restoration is recorded as a state of the object and not as a degree of damage: a competently restored globe may be worth more than a worn original and is still classed G-5. Brindlecott insists on this because a grading scale that encodes price ceases to describe the object.
The Institute's procedure examines four components in a fixed sequence. The first state that applies fixes the grade; later components cannot improve it.
A globe whose sphere is sound but whose stand has been replaced is reported as, for example, G-2 / mount replaced. The Institute refuses to combine object and mount into a single figure, on the ground that the two have separate survival rates and are frequently married after the fact.
An object without a grading scale cannot be compared across sales. Between March and December 2025 the Institute recorded 48 globe descriptions from public sale catalogues and attempted to place each in the six states from the description alone. It succeeded for 19. For the remaining 29 the description was compatible with two or more states, most often because loss of printed surface was mentioned without extent. The single most common omission was whether restoration had occurred at all: 22 of the 48 descriptions did not say.
No trade association or standards body has ratified a condition scale for terrestrial globes. The Brennholt six-state scale remains the only published attempt, and the Institute regards that as a defect of the field rather than a merit of the scale.
The Institute's review panel objects to the position of G-5. Its note of 3 March 2026 argues that treating all restoration as a single state discards the distinction between a reversible in-fill and a repainted hemisphere, and that the scale therefore loses information precisely where buyers need it. Brindlecott answers that any sub-division of G-5 would require the grader to judge quality, and that a judgement of quality cannot be made consistently by two people. The note stands.
A second dispute concerns the 20 per cent boundary between G-4 and G-6. The taxonomist of Kettering holds that loss should be weighted by location, since loss across a populated land mass destroys more of the object's content than the same area lost in open ocean. Brindlecott accepts the argument in principle and has declined to implement it, on the ground that no repeatable method of weighting has been proposed. Neither party has published since 2025.