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Time for the next part of the “Vinyl records: Collecting 101″ series.

Today I’ll concentrate on the aspects of buying a vinyl record…

1. Where to buy a vinyl record ?

Check around your local record shops, pawn shops, thrift shops, flea markets, etc.
Also, scout around some yard or garage sales. You’re bound to find some guy or gal selling some records there.

You can also search around the internet. There’s tons of vinyl sellers on eBay for example. Some of them are mass-sellers who simply scout out for records locally and put them out on a net auction. The other type of eBay vinyl seller you may encounter is a collector who got lazy or bored with the stuff or those who “inherited” a record collection somehow and try to make a profit out of it (collectors are the best sellers if you want to have some guarantee that the album you buy is in a good shape).

2. Record grading systems

Records and their covers are often graded by sellers in order to describe their general shape.

There doesn’t exist any standarized grading system, but record sellers tend to use the same or often similar scheme than others, so record grading systems in general are very similar.

As a general rule, the grade of the record is listed first, followed by the grade of the cover or record sleeve (if no cover is available).

Here’s an example record grading system from the “Record Collector Rare Price Guide 2006″ magazine:

MINT(M): The record itself is in brand new condition with no surface marks or deterioration in sound quality. The cover and any extra items such as the lyric sheet, booklet or poster are in perfect condition. Records advertised as Sealed or Unplayed should be Mint.

EXCELLENT(EX): The record shows some signs of having been played, but there is very little lessening in sound quality. The cover and packaging might have slight wear and/or creasing.

VERY GOOD(VG): The record has obviously been played many times, but displays no major deterioration in sound quality, despite noticeable surface marks and the occasional light scratch. Normal wear and tear on the cover or extra items, without any major defects, is acceptable.

GOOD(G): The record has been played so much that the sound quality has noticeably deteriorated, perhaps with some distortion and mild scratches. The cover and contents suffer from folding, scuffing of edges, spine splits, discoloration, etc.

FAIR(F): The record is still just playable but has not been cared for properly and displays considerable surface noise; it may even jump.
The cover and contents will be torn, stained and/or defaced.

POOR(P): The record will not play properly due to scratches, bad surface noise, etc. The cover and contents will be badly damaged or partly missing.

BAD(B): The record is unplayable or might even be broken, and is only of use as a collection-filler.

There are also some other grade considerations (although they aren’t as popular as the ones listed above):

NEAR MINT(NM): A nearly perfect record. Many dealers won’t give a grade higher than this implying (perhaps correctly) that no record is ever truly perfect. It’s considered as an “in between” grade for M and EX.

STILL SEALED(SS): A never-opened record. Still in it’s original manufacture seal. Take caution with this rating, because some record dealers reseal records and then claim that they’re of SS status.

Some collectors/sellers also use a + or - notation next to the grades in order to widen the grading scale even more. For example: a VG+ grade means that the record is somewhere between the VG and EX ratings.

eBay tip: If you find a seller that has a lot of albums that you’re interested in and it’s the first time you’re buying something from him, DON’T buy more than one or 2 albums. Nevermind if the seller has thousands of positive feedback from previous buyers, you need to check him out yourself. I’m saying this because some people grade their records in a more consequent way (that’s good) and some in a easy-going type way (i.e. the seller grades a “poor” or “fair” disc as a “very good” disc). So to sum things up, my advice is that you need to check the seller out if he’s a good and reliable one before buying a load of albums of off him.

eBay tip 2: If possible, try not to take the risk of buying records from people who, for example don’t own a turntable (they can’t possibly grade them properly), although many established and esteemed record sellers tend to grade their records visually, so be prepared for that.

3. Drillholes and cut-corners

You can sometimes find records which have a drillhole made right thru the record’s label or one of the record cover’s corners. You can also find records in such a state that one of the cover’s corners has a single scissor-cut on it or it’s been simply cut off. Record store owners often did that to records that they sold on a discount offer.

People who sell vinyl records online in most cases inform the potential buyer about this while decribing the state of the record and cover. Sometimes they describe it with some code-like shortcuts (like CC for Cut-Corner).

Such records are in most cases of lesser value than records without “discount modifications”.

4. The record’s edition

It’s up to you if you want to buy new vinyl pressings or used ones.

If you don’t like the whole idea of “vinyl hunting” then it may be a better resolve to just look for new releases.

Modern pressings or re-releases of vinyl tend to be worse than the originals, because often the record companies cut the vinyl master disc using not the original master tapes, but a digitally remastered tape which the company used to issue a new remastered CD release (I’ll try and touch the “original release vs. remaster” subject more in a future post).

I personally recommend looking into the catalogs of some audiophile labels (you can find some of them under the blog’s Links page).

You could also search for a company who specialises in releasing new vinyl record pressings using the original master tapes of an album (for example: Simply Vinyl).

If we’re talking about buying used vinyl, then it may be helpful to determine if our record is a 1st edition or a re-release or if it came from the original label.

For most cases, you simply need to check the label of the record and it’s catalog number. The catalog number can usually be found somewhere on the cover of the record or on the record label. Then you can compare it to the listings at allmusic.com (preffered way) or Discogs.com (also good, but not as good as the prior).

How to find the catalog number listings ? It’s pretty simple. Let’s take allmusic.com for example. You go to the website, type in the artist’s name in the search box, after you get to the artist’s webpage, click on “Discography” and choose your album. There, under the review you can find the various years of edition, the labels who originally released the album and it’s catalog number. Be aware though that allmusic.com doesn’t have perfect listings and you may come across that the catalog number just isn’t there. If that’s the case, try to google around using your catalog number. In most cases, it should be pretty unique so if anybody talked about or listed his collection on the web, you’ll find out and you’ll know that it was the same copy as yours.

Sometimes you can easily determine if the record is not a 1st edition type. Some record labels (Atlantic Records for instance) often added something like “-2″ or “B” next to the original 1st edition catalog number to specify that it’s a 2nd edition or later re-release.

Some later editions are recognised by changes to the label on the record or the record cover in comparison to the original release.

5. Mono/Stereo/Quadro

Some records (particularly those released in the 50’s and early 60’s) have been released first as a mono recording and shortly after that re-released as a stereo record. Some also record labels had simultaneously released a mono and stereo version record. Today, the mono editions are rarer, because after that most records were only stereo.

Quadrophonic records are a completely different matter and I’ll be covering this topic in a future post.

6. Origin of manufacture

This isn’t a well discussed topic in the record collector’s world (IMHO) and I’ve already elaborated on this topic in a previous post, which you can find here.

If you have the opportunity, try and obtain a copy of an album, for example one from the USA and the other from Germany and compare how they sound. Maybe you’ll back-up my humble theory ;)

That’s all for today. The next installment of the post series will cover record preservation. Stay tuned!

UPDATE:
I’ve completed the 3rd part. Click here to read it.

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