Category: Collecting

Walk into any record shop, scroll any online seller, and the same six abbreviations will appear next to every used record on offer: M, NM, VG+, VG, G+, G. These letters were standardised in the 1970s by Goldmine magazine — the United States’ authoritative vinyl publication — and they remain the lingua franca of record buying today. Get the grading wrong, and you’re either overpaying for a battered LP or missing out on a sealed treasure. Here’s how to read the code.

Why grading even exists

Records degrade physically — they’re soft plastic discs played back by a needle dragged across their surface — and they degrade visually, with sleeves that yellow, split, and tear. A grading system gives buyers and sellers a shared vocabulary for two distinct properties:

• The vinyl itself (how it sounds, how the playing surface looks).
• The sleeve and inserts (the jacket, inner sleeve, lyric inserts, posters).

A serious seller will grade both. A casual seller will conflate them. Always read closely.

The Goldmine grading scale, top to bottom

Mint (M) — perfect

Sealed in factory shrink, never opened, never played. A true Mint record has no manufacturing defects and shows zero handling. Most “Mint” listings are mislabelled — outside of unopened originals and modern reissues, real Mint is rare. Pay accordingly.

Near Mint (NM or M-) — looks unplayed

The realistic top grade for anything that’s been out of the shrink wrap. Vinyl is glossy black with no marks visible under direct light. The sleeve has crisp corners, no seam splits, no ring wear, no writing. Maybe played once or twice on excellent equipment. This is the grade most audiophiles target.

Very Good Plus (VG+) — minor cosmetic, sounds great

A record that’s been gently used. Light surface marks visible at an angle but no deep scratches. Plays back with minimal-to-no surface noise. Sleeve has one or two small imperfections — a soft corner, light ring wear, a tiny seam start. VG+ is where most collectors get their best value for money.

Very Good (VG) — audible wear, still listenable

Surface marks are obvious; you’ll hear them as occasional ticks or crackle in quiet passages. The music itself is intact and enjoyable, but a discerning ear will notice. Sleeves at this grade often have writing, more pronounced ring wear, or a small seam split. Acceptable for hard-to-find titles where higher grades are scarce.

Good Plus (G+) — heavily played

Continuous surface noise throughout. Skips possible on damaged tracks. Sleeves often have tape repairs, water marks, or significant tears. Generally only worth buying for very rare records where a better copy is essentially unobtainable, or for music you simply want to hear at almost any cost.

Good (G) — collector relic, not a listener

Plays through, but barely. Constant noise, possibly skips, audible damage. Most G records have value only for completists or for the sleeve art. Don’t pay more than a token amount.

How we grade at Blacknote

Our policy is simple: we grade conservatively. If a record sits between two grades, we list the lower one. We inspect every used record under a bright neutral light, audition the side most likely to show wear, and note any defects — pressing flaws, edge warps, off-centre holes — in the listing.

Before any used record ships, we send the buyer a short video over WhatsApp of the actual record being inspected. If the actual condition differs from our grading, the order is refunded before it leaves our table.

Red flags when shopping elsewhere

• “Plays VG+, looks VG” — a hint that the seller is reluctant to fully commit to VG+. Treat it as VG.
• “Mint condition” on an unsealed original — almost always misleading. Ask for Near Mint or better.
• No mention of the sleeve grade — assume the sleeve is at least one grade lower than the vinyl.
• No mention of inserts — for albums that originally shipped with posters, lyric sheets, or stickers, the absence of these can halve the value.
• Photos that hide the playing surface behind a paper sleeve or that show only the gatefold — ask for a clear shot of the record under direct light.

Read a grade like an audiophile

The grade alone doesn’t tell you everything. Always cross-reference:

1. Pressing country and matrix. An original UK Blue Note in VG often outranks a modern reissue in NM.
2. Label details. First pressings often command a premium; reissues, even if pristine, may not.
3. Sleeve completeness. Original inner sleeves, posters, hype stickers, OBI strips on Japanese pressings — all factor in.
4. The seller’s return policy. A confident seller offers grade-mismatch protection. We do.

Once you’ve internalised the scale, buying records gets easier — and a lot cheaper. The best collections are built by people who know the difference between VG+ and Near Mint and only pay the premium when it’s genuinely warranted.

There is no skill more useful to a vinyl collector than the ability to grade a record accurately in thirty seconds. Every used copy you encounter carries a history written in its surface: the parties it attended, the needles that tracked it, the sleeves that protected it (or didn’t). Learning to read that history is how you avoid expensive mistakes and how you find extraordinary pressings that others have undervalued.

The Goldmine grading scale — Mint, Near Mint, Very Good Plus, Very Good, Good, and below — is the industry standard. Here is what each grade actually means in practice.

Mint (M)

Unplayed. Still sealed, or opened but never put on a turntable. The pressing is factory-perfect; the sleeve is unhandled. Mint copies of desirable Indian pressings — original HMV 78s, early Columbia LPs — are genuinely rare. If someone is grading a used record as Mint, be sceptical.

Near Mint (NM)

The highest practical grade for a played record. Under a strong light you may see one or two hairlines, but they do not affect playback. The sleeve has no more than the faintest ring wear or corner softening. A Near Mint Indian original from the 1960s is the target grade for any serious collection.

Very Good Plus (VG+)

Light surface marks that may produce an occasional faint tick but no groove damage. This is the sweet spot for most collectors: visually imperfect but sonically excellent. The majority of the market trades in VG+ copies.

Very Good (VG)

Clearly visible marks; some background surface noise on quiet passages. Still enjoyable on a good turntable with a quality stylus. Acceptable for rare titles with no better copies available.

The Visual Check

Hold the record at a forty-five degree angle to a bright light source — a single bare bulb is ideal. Rotate the disc slowly. Hairlines will catch the light differently from pressed grooves. Scratches that run with the grooves are less damaging than those that cut across them. Deep radial scratches almost always cause skipping and are a dealbreaker.

Check the label for writing (owner’s names reduce value), water damage (indicates the record was stored badly), and sticker residue. Check the sleeve for seam splits, which indicate the record was stored horizontally under weight. Check the inner sleeve: a paper inner that has worn down the vinyl surface will show as a grey bloom on the record face.

With Indian pressings specifically: look for the matrix number hand-etched in the dead wax. Original pressings will show hand-stamped catalogue numbers; reissues are often machine-stamped. For HMV India pressings, a “GRAMOPHONE CO. OF INDIA” credit in the dead wax indicates an early pressing. These details take five seconds to check and can mean a price difference of several thousand rupees.

Every city has its record-hunting terrain, but Delhi’s is uniquely layered — stratified with the sediment of half a century of film culture, classical music patronage, and a middle class that once bought LPs the way it later bought cassette tapes: compulsively, abundantly, and then largely forgot about them.

That forgetting is your opportunity.

The Lay of the Land

Lajpat Rai Market in Chandni Chowk is the obvious starting point, and for good reason. The electronics wholesale district has, in its margins and side lanes, a handful of shops that have been dealing in second-hand audio equipment since before the cassette era. The vinyl here tends toward the practical — HMV pressings of Lata and Rafi, worn Decca jazz imports, the occasional treasure buried under a stack of 78s that were never properly sorted.

Come early. The good pieces surface before 10 a.m. and disappear into someone’s bag before noon. Bring cash in small denominations. Negotiation is expected, but walking in aggressive will cost you goodwill with dealers you will want to visit again.

The Sunday Circuit

The more productive hunting ground, for those willing to give up their Sunday mornings, is the informal market that spreads along the periphery of Janpath each weekend. Here, among brass figurines and old film magazines, you will find a dozen-odd sellers who have accumulated vinyl from house clearances, ancestral estates, and the remnants of closed clubs and hotel ballrooms.

The condition is wildly variable. You will flip through fifty sleeves to find three worth considering. But those three — a first-pressing RD Burman orchestration with its EMI insert intact, an imported jazz LP someone’s grandfather brought back from London in 1969, a sealed Zakir Hussain on the World Pacific label — are the reason people keep showing up at dawn.

Always check the groove before buying. Learn to read the surface: a shiny record with no deep circumferential scratches is almost always playable. A cloudy, hazy surface is not, regardless of what the sleeve looks like.

What to Look For

The most undervalued category in Delhi’s second-hand market is 1970s Hindi film music on the original HMV Odeon label. These records were pressed in enormous quantities, but many were played to death or stored badly. A clean, flat copy of a Pancham score — Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Amar Akbar Anthony, Sholay, Kati Patang — commands serious prices among collectors internationally, but still turns up at domestic flea-market rates if you know where to look and what to look for.

Equally overlooked is Indian classical on the old Columbia and Odeon labels from the 1960s. Pressing quality on these is exceptional — EMI India’s plants produced vinyl that rivals contemporary audiophile pressings in terms of dead-wax depth and channel separation. A clean Vilayat Khan sitar record on the red-label Columbia from this era is not just a collectible. It is one of the finest listening experiences available on vinyl, anywhere in the world.

The Real Reason You Go

Every serious crate digger will tell you that the find is only part of it. The real pull is the conversation — with the dealer who has been selling since the 1980s and remembers which film star used to stop by, with the other collector rifling through the same bin, comparing grading standards and swap lists.

Delhi’s vinyl underground is small enough that everyone eventually knows everyone, and generous enough that newcomers are welcomed rather than guarded against. Show up. Flip through the crates. Ask the dealer what came in last week.

That, more than any specific address or map pin, is where the hunt begins.