how were copies of vinyl made in "third-party" countries

@bdp24 

"produced early in the morning sounded different than those in the afternoon"

wow, much like Maseratis :)

Then there is the fact that each engineer who cut a lacquer for a company was free to change the sound contained in the tape he received, adding reverb, compression, frequency response manipulation, fade outs, etc.

@bdp24  I was not aware of this. I know the engineer had free reign to make changes for technical reasons; eg, using compression so that a bass heavy passage wouldn't affect the other grooves, length of run-in and run-out grooves, limiting peaks and transients. It doesn't seem right that he could make non-technical tweaks that change the creative decisions made by the production team.

@grislybutter (now THERE'S a handle!): I'm lucky to have two local record shops that specialized in used LP's, and one antique mall with an incredible LP booth. I regularly find LP's from the 1950's through the 80's, in from VG+ to near Mint condition, usually priced from $5 to $10. And a coupla times per year Music Millennium in Portland has a sidewalk sale, where most LP's are $2! You have to dig through box after box, but that's part of the used LP game.

I bought and sold records in Goldmine Record Collectors Magazine in the late-70's into the 80's. It was a small community, the dealers very dependable as far as grading and condition. Ebay and even Discogs is very hit-and-miss, you never know what you're going to get. You would think Near Mint means Near Mint, but to some sellers it apparently doesn't. I prefer to buy in person, but there are some titles you are never going to find locally.

@bdp24 if you are lucky enough to have big record stores in your city, you are lucky enough!

I recently discovered a store in my town with 1000s of 45s in boxes. It takes 15 min to go through one. 50 boxes at least. If only someone cataloged it, or sorted at least? I guess browsing is part of the fun

This meaningless grading of used records has only been happening since the vinyl resurgence. In the original era of vinyl, the grade of a used record meant something. There were no internet sales and used record shops knew how to grade using the Goldmine scale (or their own). Most shops would let you preview a record.