Vintage Media Grading (VMG) -- Vinyl records. Is this a step too far?!*

That's what I wanted to say.

 

Just don't buy on discogs from french. Those people in France don't know what is Near Mint record. For them, vg+ or vg is Near Mint. I had few situations from different sellers from France, I said never again will buy from them. Belgium is here and there too. With americans, english, germans I never had these problems.

 

You are clearly the luckiest man who has ever lived.

 

They'd make nice wall hangings.

 

Hermetically sealed grading on coins, sports cards, comic books, etc. is a big business. Looks like someone wanted to get in on the action and widen the market. Personally I hope this tanks, hard. I also can't wait for the current vinyl trend to have a nice big bubble pop.

 

These grading companies can be such scams - like, in order to get their name out there, they sell one of their graded items for millions, for something that's actually worth a fraction of that, but they sell it among themselves - and the news of this ridiculous sale gets out there, and they start getting business out of that.
Same thing happened with a copy of Mario 64 selling for a hundred thousand or so (no way it's worth anything near that), but it was scam sale, where the guys in the grading company sold it to themselves, but it made the news and they hit the ground running. Total scam, and that's to say nothing about how for vinyl the reason a certain pressing is worth money is mostly because it sounds good - sealing it up, you totally lose that most important aspect of it.

 

Let have our own party where we go to there business and burn it to the ground while taking turns playing tunes.
I found this practice disgusting when they did this to comics and absolutely blasphemous if done to a record.
We are so in the end times.

 

When 'mint' for them means the record still may have some flaws, does there exist something higher than 'mint'? Hypermint or something?

 

Yeah, mint should *only* be still in original wrapping and pristine underneath, like no bends, scuffs, etc, not even on the shrink-wrap.
(though some cheaters may re-shrink-wrap an item making it seem unopened when it's not)

 

Yeah. It "works" if one (or two) companies are able to dominate the entire market and gain enough of the public trust by providing consistent, competent performance of the grading. These guys look like they've got a very long way to go, in that regard. Also, it would have limited value to many people who own vinyl, since it's for people who aren't playing it (or if you do play it, then the grade becomes worthless). For example, although I haven't paid any attention to sports trading cards in decades, I do know how this whole thing works, and one of the benefits of buying a card that's been professionally graded is that you get to carry the grade with you, so to speak. For this though, you can't if you buy it to play. So IMO even a good company doing this is providing only 50% of the value that other such services provide for other collectibles, which IMO would greatly impact the ability of any company to gain much of a traction in this market.

 

Yuck

 

I am sending them Billy Joel's whole discography.

 

Those sound better hermetically sealed.

 

So now the folks buying $10,000 guitars without knowing how to play them are getting into the vinyl collecting game without intending to listen to the music?

 

At first I thought this was just a cleaning and grading service (which I guess I could see paying for, if I didn’t want to clean records myself and maybe wanted to have them graded, for some reason?). But now that I understand it’s for the purpose of locking the record up in plastic to never be played, I don’t see myself ever having any interest in this type of thing. Not only do I, personally, own all of my records for the purpose of hearing the music on them, I also don’t agree that the records, themselves, are works of visual art. Any time I see people use records (the actual vinyl record, not the album cover, many of which are displayable as art, of course) as decoration, I kind of roll my eyes, to be honest. Just kind of kitschy and tacky, right?

 

This is brilliant. I can't believe CGC didn't leap on this once the comics market imploded. Perfect brand extension.
Wonder how much my old copy of "Sesame Street Fever" is worth. It's got a scratch in the middle of "Rubber Ducky"

 

and why is that? are you unhappy that people who want to buy new music records are once again able to?

 

I'm sure some credible vinyl grading service will happen eventually, but as the kids say: this ain't it.

 

OK, here is my two cents on the subject. For those with money to burn, I guess it would be an ok service. However, for me and others like me, this is when things regarding this hobby, pastime, passion, or whatever you want to call it start to get stupid. We have been here before. Shortly before the original demise of vinyl LP records, it all started to get too technical and complicated just before CDs came out and all those cottage industries dedicated to vinyl records got tossed out the window. With the exception of some die-hard collectors, people were dumping their vinyl collections at the local Salvation Army. That's where I scored some of my best acquisitions.

As far as me buying records from eBay or whatever, I never expect anything past a VG+ rating and that is high for me. It's mostly VG at the most and I pay accordingly for that rating. 40- to 50-year-old records have a lot of stories to tell so don't expect anything else. For most of us old timers, this stuff is old hat. Most of the time now, I just toss on some of my average worn LPs on a generic record player and I don't worry about the rating. I enjoy the music just the same and save my pristine records for my more sophisticated stereo system. However, having said that, the latter has become less and less as time goes on. Don't worry about the small stuff, just enjoy the music.

 

The crazy recent statistic was that something like 50% of the people who are buying vinyl records these days don't even own a turntable - they just like them as cool collectables. So maybe this will be more for them.

 

I'm not saying that comic books and baseball cards shouldn't have monetary value as collectibles but I've never been a fan of the grading services on those either. To each his own, but I'd rather be able to look at either, without it being encased in plastic forevermore. Both were meant to be handled and mishandled by kids, which is precisely why those that have survived hold value today. But hey, maybe my 1972 Nolan Ryan would rate a 7.5 or something. I've kept it for over 50 years for the big payoff, right?

 

I find this similar to grading Magic and Pokemon cards. They are meant to be played. The second you slab it, the whole purpose of the item is now destroyed and it becomes a fetish.

 

Conceptually I have zero issues with vinyl as collectables. People collect things. Please drive through.

But authority doesn't just happen with a (poorly designed) website. Credibility is the life blood of the collector and, from what I can tell, VMG offer no meaningful credentials that assures their ratings have value in a marketplace. NFT or otherwise.

My guess is that the market will judge this endeavor accordingly.

 

I mean, if they grade a vinyl "mint" that actually has a scratch/skip that is only audible, how is anyone going to know if they encase it in plastic?

 

Yes, it will, but possibly not in the manner you expect.

I guarantee, the first time someone's copy of Sgt. Pepper's gets a 9.8 grade and that person can (legitimately) say that it's the highest-graded copy known in existence, they will be able to flip it for an absurd amount of money.