What a Record Grade Actually Tells You

You have seen VG+ a thousand times. It sits in the corner of a Discogs listing, on a sticker on a poly sleeve, on a card taped to a bin at a shop. Nobody has ever explained it to you, and you have almost certainly done what everyone does, which is read it as a score out of ten. Very Good Plus. Sounds like a B. Probably fine.

That reading is the most expensive mistake in buying used records, and it costs in both directions. It makes people pay Near Mint money for a copy that ticks, and it makes them walk past a copy that would have been the best sounding record they own.

Here is the thing the letters do not say out loud. A grade is a description of a physical object, written by somebody who handled it. It is not a prediction of how it will sound. Those two things are related, and they are not the same, and knowing exactly where they come apart is what turns buying used from a gamble into ordinary shopping.

What the Letters Are Actually Describing

The record trade settled on the Goldmine scale a long time ago, and Discogs adopting it made it the default language of used vinyl online. Mint, Near Mint, Very Good Plus, Very Good, Good Plus, Good, Fair, Poor. The record and the sleeve get their own grade, because they are two objects with two histories and averaging them helps nobody.

Every one of those grades describes a state. Scuffs, gloss, warp, ring wear, seam splits, writing on the label. It is an inventory of what has happened to a piece of plastic and a piece of cardboard since they left the plant. That inventory correlates with playback, which is why the scale is useful at all.

The scale is also a price scale, and that matters more than people realize. The Goldmine guides have priced Very Good Plus at roughly half of Near Mint and Very Good at roughly a quarter for as long as I have been paying attention. One step on the scale is a fifty percent move in money. That is the pressure that produces overgrading, and it is the reason a grade on its own, with no description attached to it, is worth very little.

The Word "Good" Is the Trap

On this scale, Good is bad. Good means a record that plays all the way through with obvious noise and visible wear, the sort of copy that lived in a stack on the floor. It is the grade you buy when the record is rare enough that a beaten copy beats no copy. In ordinary English "good" is a compliment, and on the Goldmine scale it is the lowest grade that still plays all the way through.

Very Good has the same problem more quietly. Read the standard rather than the words and Very Good is a record with audible surface noise, visible scuffs and some groove wear. Very Good Plus, the grade you see most often, promises only that the defects are cosmetic. That is a claim about what the grader saw, not a claim of silence, and on a quiet record the gap between cosmetic and inaudible is exactly where the noise lives. Plenty of people have bought a VG+ copy of a solo piano record, heard the noise floor between the notes and concluded the seller lied. The seller did not lie. The buyer read a report card.

The abbreviations also do not travel. The UK trade has long run its own scale, where Excellent sits roughly where Near Mint does, so two honest sellers can describe the same record in two different vocabularies. When a listing's wording looks unfamiliar, the question is not what the grade is but which scale it is on.

Sight Graded and Play Graded Are Two Different Claims

This is the distinction that matters more than any single step on the scale, and it is the one almost nobody explains.

A sight grade means somebody took the record out, held it under a light at an angle, and wrote down what they could see. A play grade means somebody put it on a turntable and listened to it. Those are different amounts of work and different amounts of information, and the gap between them is where used record disappointment lives.

Sight grading is not lazy. A dealer with four thousand records cannot play four thousand records, and under a raking light a practiced eye finds most of what is there: scratches, scuffs, the paper haze from a shedding inner sleeve, the grey sheen that means somebody played this with a worn stylus.

But there are faults a light cannot find, and they are the ones that ruin a record:

• An off center pressing. The hole was punched slightly off the middle at the plant. The record looks perfect and the pitch wobbles on every sustained note. Nothing about this is visible in a bin, and short of recutting the hole there is nothing to be done about it.
• Non fill. The vinyl did not completely fill the stamper, usually near the label or in the first few grooves, and it plays as a swishy grit under the music. It is often invisible.
• Groove wear. Sometimes it shows as a dulling of the gloss and sometimes it does not, and it is audible as a hardness on loud passages and on vocal sibilance, worst in the inner grooves where the stylus has the least groove to work with.
• A warp. Records sit flat in a bin because the records on either side hold them flat. Put one on a platter and a dish or an edge warp appears that nobody in the shop ever saw.
• A single tick. A mark too small to see under any light, in the quiet bar before the band comes in, on every play, forever.

So when a listing says "graded visually, not played," that is a statement of scope rather than a warning label, and it is more useful than a confident grade with no method attached. It tells you the grade covers appearance and does not cover the five things above.

Given the choice between one grade step and a play grade, take the play grade. A played VG+ that somebody listened to all the way through is a better purchase than a sight graded Near Mint, because one of them is a report and the other is an estimate.

What a Grade Does Not Cover at All

Some things sit outside the scale entirely, and expecting the grade to carry them is how people end up annoyed at a seller who did nothing wrong.

Completeness. A grade is condition, not contents. The poster, the insert, the lyric sheet, the obi strip, the hype sticker, the original inner. None of that is in the grade, it belongs in the description, and on some records it is most of the value.

Which pressing it is. This is the big one. A Near Mint copy of a reissue cut from a CD master is a flawless copy of a mediocre sounding record. The grade says the object is clean and says nothing about what was cut into it. That question lives in the dead wax, in the matrix and stamper codes scratched into the run out groove, and it is a separate investigation.

The sleeve, which is why it gets its own grade. Ring wear, seam splits, spine fade, writing, and cut out marks, meaning the drill hole or sawn corner that says this was deleted stock. A clean disc in a wrecked jacket is common, and it is often the best value on the wall.

Spindle marks. The scuffing around the center hole is barely a condition question, and it is the best free evidence in the transaction. Heavy spindle burn means this record was dropped onto a spindle many times, usually on a changer, usually by somebody who was not precious about it. It tells you what kind of life the record had before you get anywhere near the grooves.

What Comes Off, and What Is There Forever

Half of what makes a used record sound bad is dirt, and dirt is the only category in this entire article that you can do something about after the fact.

Comes off: dust, fingerprints, smoke film, mold release on a new pressing, the dried residue of whatever somebody cleaned it with in 1978, and the loose paper dust from a shedding inner sleeve.

Does not come off: anything your fingernail catches, groove wear, non fill, an off center hole, most warps, and anything heat has done. The fingernail test is worth keeping. Not every audible scratch will catch a nail, but a scratch that catches a nail will be audible.

Which means a grade shifts meaning depending on who wrote it. A VG+ from a seller who cleans every record before grading is a real VG+, because they are describing the vinyl. A VG+ from a shop that grades straight out of the crate may be a Near Mint record wearing forty years of grime. I have bought records at Very Good Plus money that turned out to be excellent, and the only skill involved was recognizing dirt as dirt, so if you buy used at all, have the cleaning routine in place before the records arrive rather than after.

It runs the other way too, and that half is less fun. A record that looks bad because it is dirty can be rescued. A record that looks fine and has been played a thousand times under a heavy ceramic cartridge cannot.

A Grade Is Worth More When the Grader Names the Fault

"VG+" is a letter. It compresses everything the grader saw into two characters and a plus sign, and compression loses information by design.

"VG+. A two inch scuff crossing the last two tracks of side one, audible as light noise under the intro and gone once the band is in. Light paper haze elsewhere, cleaned. Sleeve VG, ring wear and a two inch bottom seam split, unrepaired." That is a description, and it restores almost everything the letter threw away. You can decide against it. You cannot be surprised by it.

I will take a named fault over a higher grade every time, and it is not close. A seller who writes down the scuff has told you two things: what is wrong with this copy, and that they looked. A stock photo and a grade tell you neither.

That is the standard to hold any seller to, us included: the grade, and the fault that decided it, written down in words you can act on.

How I Actually Buy Used

In a bin, four things, in about twenty seconds. Slide the disc out and tilt it until the light rakes across the grooves, which shows scuffs and the dull grey of groove wear far better than looking straight at it. Sight down the disc edge on, the way you would check a board for straightness, because that is where a warp hides. Look at the spindle area. Then flex the sleeve at the bottom seam, which is the split you cannot see with the record inside it. If the record matters, read the dead wax before deciding anything: the grade tells you about this copy, the matrix tells you which record it is.

Online, I read the notes before I read the grade. A real description under a lower grade is a better bet than a higher grade with nothing under it, and a seller with a return policy has told you what their grading is worth in money rather than in adjectives.

Then there is the part that decides more purchases than anything above: what is on the record. Surface noise sits at a more or less fixed level, and whether you hear it depends entirely on how quiet the music gets. A VG copy of a loud rock record is a perfectly good listening experience, because the music sits above the noise almost all the time. A VG copy of solo piano, a voice and a guitar, a string quartet, or anything on ECM is an exercise in listening to a record through weather. Same grade, two completely different purchases. So I will buy VG on something loud and rare without thinking twice, and I will hold out for VG+ or better on anything quiet, even when it costs me the copy.

The Short Version

A grade describes the object, not the sound. Read it as an inventory of physical faults written by somebody who handled the record, because that is exactly what it is.

Good is bad, Very Good is worn, and Very Good Plus promises only that the defects are cosmetic rather than that the record is silent.

Ask whether it was played or only looked at, and prefer the played grade over a step of the scale. Off center pressings, non fill, groove wear, warps and a single tick are the five faults a visual inspection will miss, and no cleaning fixes any of them.

Assume dirt comes off and anything your fingernail catches does not. Buy from the seller who names the fault, even one grade lower, every time. And let the music set your floor: Very Good is fine on something loud and not remotely fine on something quiet.

Bring the One You Are Not Sure About

The listening room at Free River Studios, 215 E. Lewis St #301 in Livingston, has a table that is set up properly, which is the only sure way to find out whether a copy ticks or your own setup does. Bring the record you have been arguing with. It is by appointment, third floor. We take records on consignment and in trade, so if you are thinning a collection rather than building one, bring that and I will grade it in front of you. Cleaning and storage each have an article of their own.