All Records

Start with new or used, because they answer different questions. A new pressing is a known quantity: current, flat, unplayed, and available. Used is where the interesting pressings live, along with the out of print, the original issues, and most of the value. The trade off is that a used copy has a history and somebody has to describe it honestly.

Then the pressing, and this is the fork that matters most. The year on the label tells you less than the master does. A 2020 reissue cut from the original analogue tape can beat a worn original, and a reissue cut from a digital file made for CD in 1987 will sound like that file no matter what the vinyl weighs. Good reissue labels state their source. When a label says nothing about where the master came from, that silence is information.

Speed and disc count are the next question and they are not marketing. Cutting an album across four sides at 45 rpm gives the cutting engineer more groove for the same music, which allows a hotter cut and less compromise in the inner grooves. It also costs more, needs two more side changes, and matters less on quiet material than on loud.

Weight is the specification people rank by and it is the one that does least. A 180 gram pressing is more rigid and tends to sit flatter, which is worth something over decades. It does not add resolution, and it cannot improve a master.

For a used copy, the grade is the specification. Read the record grade, read the sleeve grade, and read the condition notes, because those notes are where the specific defects live.

The record trade already has a published grading standard and we use it. Goldmine runs Mint, Near Mint, Very Good Plus, Very Good, Good Plus, Good, Fair and Poor, and we apply it conservatively. Three rules do most of the work. Grade the worst part of the record, because people play the whole album. Grade the record and the sleeve separately and list both, because a clean disc in a beaten jacket is exactly that and nothing is served by averaging them. When a copy sits between two grades it gets the lower one.

Mint means sealed and unplayed, full stop. A still sealed record from 1972 with shelf wear on the jacket is Near Mint, not Mint.

Surface noise and dirt are not the same problem, and telling them apart saves you cleaning the same record four times. Dirt is broadband, it moves around, and it comes off. A pressing fault repeats in the same place on every rotation and will be there forever. A record can be spotless and still tick.

The dead wax holds the identification. The etched or stamped characters in the run out groove name the lacquer, the stamper and often the cutting engineer, which is how a specific pressing gets identified rather than guessed at.

Two habits protect a collection more than any purchase. Store records vertically, supported so nothing leans, away from sun and heat. And get the paper inner sleeves out, because the sleeve most records shipped in is abrasive enough to put the fine scuffing on the disc that you will later be grading.