Based on authors’ years of experience of archive appraisal, this article summarizes ten key points that should be applied for the appraisal of military archives, that is to say, “four key points, three features and three typical items”. It also discusses the theoretical origins of these ten key points as well as some real-life examples of archive-appraising cases. Thus this article materialized the abstract principles of archive appraisal, and therefore could be used as reference for archive-appraising personnel to accurately grasp the archive-appraisal standards.