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The condition of your record album cover and/or record jacket is just as important as the condition of the record that it contains. You see, the condition of any collectable and antique also is a basis for the determination of the value of the item in question. Very old but in mint condition items are worth more to collectors because those items can still serve the purpose of which those items were created those many years ago.

A truly dirty record album cover in the places where such an album cover is most likely to be handled indicates that the record inside was most likely played many times since it was purchased. Nothing lasts forever and the more times that a vinyl record is played the worse the sound quality. More often than not, a simple inspection of the playing surface of the record will reveal ware in its surface. You see, the record isn't as shiny as it was when it was new because the needle or needles used to play the record wore deep into the grove of the record track.

Then again, scratched records are not worth very much because, more often than not, the resulting pops heard during the playback destroys the artists' performance. If surface ware isn't detected, you can also play the record, using your own equipment. That is, if your equipment won't cause excessive damage to the surface of the record.

In my case, I have a huge collection of phonograph records and the best turn table available for playing those records. If the record has many pops and a great deal of background noise, most likely it is worn or somehow damaged and/or dirty. So too, I have a way to safely remove most, if not all, of the dirt and dust on the surface of that record, but I can't replace what has been worn away from the repeated playing of the record.

As such, if a cleaned record still contains a great deal of noise it is more or less worthless to a collector who truly loves music and is well aware of the music reproduction quality of a mint condition phonograph record. Well, a mint condition phonograph record is one that had never been played and the buyer should be extremely careful to only purchase an original manufactured sealed LP.

You see, a newly sealed plastic wrapper can easily be applied to an album cover of a previously played record and sold as mint to the novice collector for a price far in excess of its true worth. Because of that fact, I would much rather purchase a played record that is in excellent condition.

Those never played records are as rare as can be because I myself always played each and every record that I ever purchased, and the manufacturers of those phonograph records might have sold or disposed of their inventories of such records a long time ago. That is, if they didn't go out of business many years ago. It costs big money to properly store a large quantity of new phonograph records and the buyers of those records are few and far between.

Retired people and avid music collectors are the only customers for phonograph records. Then too, people do collect album covers for their artistic value, just like any other works of art.

From my point of view, if the album cover isn't fresh and clean and the record is less than excellent in regard to its cleaned playing quality neither is worth adding to my huge collection. Then again you can easily sell those poor graded records in a flea market for less than a dollar each. Believe it not, some people truly like the music on the record and will buy it just to relive a past memory of their life. Where were you when you first heard that wonderful song?

Learn more about this author, Joseph Malek.
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