This article introduces a thermometer scale to measure explicit death valence and explores its associations with death needs and death coping. While previous measures of a good death comprised interviews, surveys and implicit tests, no brief explicit measure for death valence seemed to exist. However, death positivity might affect personal well-being, end-of-life care and social encounters, due its relationship with life satisfaction and social prejudice. A repeated measures design indicated the sufficient reliability and validity. The scale should not be used as a single measure though, as implicit and explicit death attitudes show particular inconsistencies. Exploratory analyses revealed that people valued their own mortality more positively when they expected their death needs to be met, supporting the assumption of death needs constituting death valence. Five death need clusters were linked to death valence. Death positivity was furthermore associated with more acceptance coping, lmore active coping, reframing, humor, coping with religion, with the search for emotional support and with less death avoidance. Future research could examine the associations between death positivity, death needs and coping, as well as the thermometer scale's potential for health studies and social sciences.