Vinyl records grading scale

I agree that most record grading is spurious and has no correlation to the sound. Many records are M or near mint. The latter should mean pristine, perhaps played once and unmarked, they very seldom are. Visual grading is useless anyway, you need to play both sides and what commercial seller has time. I agree with Arahl, get to know sellers you can trust and stick with them.
A good vacume clean does make a big difference too.

From the following grading
Mint, NM, Ex, VG+, VG, Good, Fair, Poor, and Trash

If you have an expensive cartridge (over $300), which would be the least condition that you will be trying with your cartridge? How about for budget level (under $70)?

I have over 500 LPs, and most of them (about 300 that I bought from Garage sale at under $1.00) are Good ~ Trash condition. So far, I have not bothered play them on my Grado Black cartridges and inexpensive Shure cartridges. I recently purchased more expensive ones, and I wonder whether I'd rather be more careful.

I guess that based on responses one would ideally stay on EX/VG++ or above unless there is something really special that you want and theprice is adequate.
My limited experience has been that you can aproximate the noise level of most records by visual grade on relatively clean records. I suspect most of the ratings you see on sale offers are made pretty much that way. Again, thanks for your comments.

In your experiences where are the better source of good sellers? Ebay? Agon? other forums? private sellers or dealers? Thanks.

I agree that you need to get to know the seller. If you don't know the seller, you should assume overgrading. Even though VG is supposed to mean "very good," it actually means "vertible garbage" in many cases, especially if you only like to listen to dead quiet vinyl. One time I ordered some records from a large used record store that sends out a regular email list. Some of the records were listed as VG++, but the covers looked like a dog had chewed them and the records inside didn't look much better.

If you are spending the time and money to clean with a Loricraft (or any other record cleaner), I wouldn't bother with anything less than NM- or EX, unless you know the seller really well, or it is so dirt cheap, it is worth a try.

Good luck.

Mark