Second hand vinyl surface damage.

whart

Impossible to tell without play checking the record, ideally after a good cleaning. There are tell-tales that can indicate a record is trashed, but even a pristine looking record can suffer from groove chew by old kludgey tone arms ... I’ve had records that looked like crap and plays fine and others that look fine and are distorted, the groove walls having been abraded or damaged.

Yup, same here.  Buying a used record is always a roll of the dice.

Do what elliottbnewcombjr says.  He's really got the situation pegged.

i take a small powerful flashlight with me and only buy near mint records, i dont mind a filthy record as i am going to clean it anyways but i have very little tolerance for scratches.  but the good news is that they are out there, not all records were misused and plenty of them were barely played you just have to keep looking.

It’s not just inspecting/cleaning them, it is how you get em also.

Sometimes I’m careful, sometimes not so much.

I’m a listener, not a collector, and never spend a lot individually for used. Buying on Discogs, unseen, I sort by condition, buy new, mint, nearly mint only. 1 came dirty, annoying, but luckily cleaned up nicely.

Find a title of interest, Then, which pressing? I pay some attention, make a guess/choice. Before add to cart I do a general search for that specific title, sometimes find a new one for less than a used one. Again, what pressing?

Concert, selling LP’s in the lobby? Search on your phone, less, now, wait, gotta make a decision. I have patience to wait.

picked up 4 used lps yesterday, $17. At that price, if one bad, no biggie.

Just walking to the car, Donna sees something ’cute’ in a window, small shop, store owner told her he was closed, but come on in while he shuts down.

Turns out he has some new and used LPs in the back, Donna comes out and tells me. I don’t have the time/patience to really go over them, especially wearing a mask, and Donna waiting for me, so I only pulled out of sleeve halfway, see anything, forget it. Look encouraging, this situation, ok, I didn’t even look at the other side,

Look good, unknown singer, nice list of instruments, I ask Donna to look the artist up on her phone, next thing I am listening to her voice, hmmmm

Point is, you win most of the time, you lose some. I lump them all in my brain, some mistakes, but all together, over many years, I’ve gotten a lot of music I would never have bought new, and a large majority clean up quite enjoyably.

I’ll let you know if all good after I clean them.

I’m probably more tolerant than most audiophiles. But if there are any grooves that either skip or repeat, if there are grooves that display significant distortion (from being chewed up by a previous owner), or if the noise floor becomes overpowering for even rock music, then it gets put into the "do not play" pile. Deep scratches that yield a loud "pop" an 2 second intervals can be awful, and I judge them on a case-by-case basis. Occasionally there will be a record with a single extraordinarily loud "POP" instance - and then I try to find a baked-on piece of grit that caused it so it can be cleaned off. Of course, when a record is a bit noisy I will play it, but if I really like it I’ll try to acquire a better copy, eventually.

I visually inspect vinyl at local stores. And on DiscOgs I aim for VG+ or NM, only going down to VG if absolutely necessary. With this, it’s relatively rare to encounter a record that fails my playback criteria. It’s more likely that the recording/master/pressing just sounds "blah", and I will not want to listen to it again for that reason. But that's the value of vintage vinyl - they tend to sound better than most reissues. So I find it extremely worthwhile to buy used. 

I do have one record I love with a failed end-groove (Dust - Hard Attack side A), but no other playback issues. That’s no fun, when you get to the end of a side and your expensive MC stylus is sent careening into the paper label (a water damaged label to boot)!