Best places to find vinyl

Depends on what you mean by reliable?

Discogs is good along with eBay but I would always in your mind downgrade their record grading a notch and you should be all set.

So those pair are reliable in that you will get items that may be very hard to find elsewhere, they might not be exactly as they are depicted in grading and you may have to pay silly money for them!

uberwaltz...thanks!  I like to buy in person just so I can make the determination of the condition.  Great advice though and plan on using it!

Even a visual inspection can only tell you so much- appearance of surfaces, spindle hole wear and if you spin it on a turntable at a shop, warps. Play grading is pretty variable, depending on who is doing the grading- (you may not want a seller to be playing an older album that hasn’t gotten a proper cleaning on a questionable turntable set up). Most visual grading is inflated--I won’t look at anything less than M- for the media (I don’t care as much about the sleeve unless there is an indication of water damage, which is a red flag for mold- stay away!). Records are one of the few products where "very good plus" means not very good. 
I usually engage an online seller in a dialog through the message feature of the e-platform. It not only gives me more info about the record, but about the seller’s standards and knowledge. Make sure you have a right to return if it is an expensive album. I’ve had to do that a few times-- i’m not interested in a discount for a bad playing copy- but the dialogue has helped me screen many records as ’no buy’ before I committed. The cleaning is something you should do unless you know exactly what the seller’s methods are.

whart

Even a visual inspection can only tell you so much- appearance of surfaces, spindle hole wear and if you spin it on a turntable at a shop, warps. Play grading is pretty variable, depending on who is doing the grading ...

This is so true. I've bought records that looked mint and played awful. Conversely, I've bought records that did not look good, but played a-ok.

Agreed on that cleeds!

I bought a job lot of 217 vinyl from my LRS for $200 and even after cleaning I had made up in my mind how they were going to sound from visual.

As per your comments there are a few that I also thought about just throwing away from visual that played straight and true with nary a pop or click.

And ones that looked like never been played that were of lesser SQ than the aforementioned.

It’s a strange world.