To Open Older Sealed Vinyl Or Keep It Sealed??

That's a fair point, but it seems it would have to be a much rarer occurrence than the risk of over-graded open LPs or sealed LPs with factory defects. As you say, individuals and people selling records from their own collections would not have a resealing machine. OTOH, someone who sells LPs for a living can't afford to get caught, and it would only take one negative Feedback about a re-sealed album to do far more financial harm than the Seller would gain from such deception. Very high risk proposition for the Seller, it seems.

And if a Seller is of the kind of character that he re-seals albums and represents them as factory sealed, he probably has other negative qualities that would be revealed in the Seller's feedback as well.

Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to weigh the different factors and probabilities

 

Play it. Life is too short.

 

Music was meant to be played!

 

But the tape probably only has around 100 play lifes (assuming a perfectly set up R2R deck) before it will start to degrade in sound quality. An LP is no where near that.

 

I tend to disagree, if anything I'd say that the tape has more of a life than the LP assuming a nice deck runs well and is maintained. Much more than 100 plays for sure.
But that is besides the point. The way I see it, is if the discussion is suddenly flipped from commercial LP's to master tapes, I feel that a lot of the people in the "music is not an investment" crowd may start suddenly changing their personal opinion on the matter and thus choose to play the LP.


We must keep in mind, of course, the situation is purely hypothetical. We assume the wear life is the same, the LP in question is sourced from the master, and the cost to acquire each was similar.

 

I buy sealed vintage LPs whenever I can. I always play them. Just expect them to be warped. Most of mine weren't, but it's the risk you take.

 

I've heard a few mastering engineers say 100 plays. Example.

Other engineers have posted similar thoughts on the Gear Slutz board with measurements (high frequency degradation)

I don't think anyone has undertaken it with vinyl.

 

I have a few sealed records that are investments. I own opened copies of those titles to play but I'll be selling the sealed ones in the future for a lot of money. They are worth a lot now and as soon as I see them stop increasing in price and start leveling off, they will be sold.

Otherwise, play the sumsofbitches.

 

Yeah, it it's something you don't have on either opened vinyl or CD, then by all means open it and play it.

 

It's like comic books that are printed on newsprint, they yellow after 20-30 years. You can slow it down but baging them in
plastic sleeves and boards etc.

 

Open them as they were meant to be played, unless you want to start hoarding them and keeping them sealed (theres no guarantee that they will be valuable still later).
Hehe, I have few vinyl still sealed (extra copies that I found for real bargain price) but I suppose Im gonna take them out and play them.

 

Easy choice for me, music is made to be listened to. Play it and enjoy it

 

If you have difficulty opening a record, I recommend either a box cutter or an x-acto blade. There are no sealed LPs in my house.

 

And I operated the sealing machine at Tower Berkeley for a few years. Lots of places have shrink wrap machines—Rare Records Glendale, the Borders store in Fresno where I used to work. It's no big. You could buy one cheap enough.

http://www.uline.com/BL_2455/Economy-Shrink-Wrap-System

Just make sure you keep the wire that heat-cuts the shrink wrap nice and clean and shiny. Otherwise you'll have tell-tale burn marks on the shrink, a dead give-away for a re-shrunk record. If you ever see a brownish tinge at the seam of a shrink-wrap job, you'll know it was done by some minimum wage tool at some record store. It happens much more frequently than you might imagine.

 

Open it. I find most titles, even when found unopened from the 70's, are not that valuable. I had purchased Johnny Winter's "John Dawson Winter III", Doobie Brothers "Once Were Vices Are Now Habits" albums unopened a number of years ago for 9.00 bucks each. So unless you're talking a rarity here....
I did not hesitate to open mine. I bought them to play.

 

I wouldn't be above flipping a sealed album without playing it. As someone said already, you can probably buy a NM copy of the same record with the profit. Plus, you can probably find a torrent of the exact same LP available to download somewhere, so then it's a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation. Having said all that, there are exactly zero sealed, unplayed albums in my collection.

 

The only one I ever sat on sealed for a long time was Big Star #1 record. Finally opened it one night when some friends from Memphis were there to discover a copy with a big pressing flaw. heh.

Since then if I pick up something sealed I want to hear, I open it. That's what they're made for. I do pick up other sealed things here and there for a friend who runs an online store, and he often opens them to check the condition anyway. Right now I have a sealed TJB Whipped Cream I'm not sure what to do with ... saw it at a thrift store and just couldn't leave it there unsupervised!

 

I am unable to leave albums sealed, or let sleeping dogs lie.

 

Maybe one day they'll invent a record player that can play still-sealed records.

 

I would rather have a sealed record that's been opened and had a plastic inner put in for preservation. For me having a spotless mint record is more important than a record that has some specs of dirt from the plant, got shoved into a paper insert and was then sealed. It might look clean on the outside but on the inside...

However if you are in collectors territory then do what you do.

 

I have this same dilemma. If an album isn't too rare sealed, then I open and play it, but I've bought $30-$50 records in sealed condition specifically to upgrade a used copy that I have and darnit if I can't bring myself to open the damn things. Case in point, I have a couple of Varese Sarabande soundtrack albums (Phantasm and Martin), the former which goes for good money in decent condition. I think I paid $20 for my sealed copy (a steal!) and my existing copy has groove damage, but it's gonna hurt to open up that sealed one. I keep searching for another cheap minty or sealed copy so I don't have to do it!

 

I recently purchased a still sealed 1966 mono Capitol LP called "The Who's Who Of Country & Western Music", which was a favorite from my childhood, which my grandmother gave me. My copy was an Australian record club pressing, with no cover, and is now absolutely ruined!

Got the package last night, the seal lasted about 15 minutes before I unsealed the record from it's 47 year imprisonment. Flat as a tack, not a mark to be seen!

After a light clean, this one is getting needledropped on the first play so I can give a CD-R of it to my nanna

 

In my humble opinion, vinyl was made to be played.

 

I have bought a few sealed albums ... They get opened... Thy get cleaned.... They get played

 

Life is short. If you don't have another copy of it open it up and play it if you want! Entirely up to you!