How to Tell If a Record Is Valuable: Seven Checks

Run these in order and you will know within a few minutes whether a record is worth researching further.

• Is it an original pressing or a reissue? The catalogue number, the label design and the address line on the back cover date a record more reliably than the copyright year printed on the sleeve. A reissue of a famous album is almost never worth more than the cost of a new record.
• Mono or stereo? For records from roughly 1958 to 1968, one of the two is usually much scarcer, and which one depends on the title. This single question moves prices by a factor of ten on some albums.
• What does the runout say? Transcribe the etched or stamped string on both sides. The suffix is the cut number, and a different cut is a different pressing.
• Is the sleeve the original artwork? Recalled and altered covers are where the money is. Sleeves are also graded separately from the disc.
• Are the inserts there? Posters, lyric inners, obi strips on Japanese pressings. These are the first things lost and they carry real value.
• What grade is it, honestly? Under a strong bulb, held at an angle, not in daylight.
• Is there a record of it selling? Not an asking price — a completed sale, with a date.

If the answers are reissue, common configuration, ordinary sleeve, missing inserts and Very Good, you are holding a few dollars, and no amount of further research changes that.

Goldmine, whose grading guide became the standard the American trade uses, opens with a flat statement: nothing is more important in determining the value of your records than their condition. Rarity and demand matter, but a dealer will pay far more for a Near Mint copy than for a worn one of the same record.

It then says something most owners find uncomfortable. Most people have an inflated sense of the condition of their discs, and most records — especially those made before the 1970s — are nowhere near Mint or Near Mint. The estimate is that no more than 2 to 4 per cent of all records surviving from the 1950s and 1960s are genuinely Near Mint.

The published multipliers below Near Mint are steep. Very Good Plus is generally about half. Very Good is no more than a quarter. Good and Good Plus are 10 to 15 per cent. Poor and Fair are 0 to 5 per cent, if they sell at all.

There is also a useful note about older records: Goldmine's experience is that LPs from the 1950s to about 1971 tend to play better than they look, and LPs from then until about 1989 tend to play worse than they look.

The records people expect to be valuable are the ones that sold best, and selling best is what makes a record common.

The White Album is certified 24 times platinum in the United States with more than 24 million copies sold there, and Capitol shipped 3.3 million copies to American shops in the first four days alone. Thriller is certified 34 times platinum in the US and has sold roughly 70 million copies worldwide. Elvis' Christmas Album, counting its reissues, has shipped at least 17 million copies in the US. Meet the Beatles! had sold over four million copies by the end of 1964. These are not scarce objects.

Age is no better as a signal. Shellac 78s were the standard format until the summer of 1958 in the United States, and they were produced in enormous quantities for half a century, so being from 1930 tells you almost nothing about value. Meanwhile a 1989 hardcore LP, Judge's Chung King Can Suck It!, sold for US$6,048 on Discogs.com in May 2015 because the pressing run was tiny.

The signal that works is scarcity of the specific pressing, and that is why identification comes before valuation.

First, the sleeve is graded separately and it counts. Goldmine grades record and cover as two items, and where a title is normally sold with both, it suggests averaging the two grades to estimate a mixed-grade copy — a VG cover with a VG+ record sits between the two. An album without its cover is effectively worthless, and a cover without its record is worthless too.

Second, a cut-out marking permanently caps the grade. A drill hole, a clipped corner or a saw cut through the spine means the album was sold off as deleted stock, and Goldmine states that a cover with a cut-out marking can never be considered Near Mint. Many sellers quietly ignore this.

Writing, tape and small seam splits do not automatically drop a record a full grade, but Goldmine is firm that you must always mention them when selling. For some buyers they are irrelevant and for others they end the conversation, and either way the buyer is entitled to know.

Our vinyl grading scale page has every grade definition, and the vinyl record price guide page explains where completed sale prices come from. If you are not sure what you are holding, photograph the label and the sleeve and the app identifies it.