What should I look for when purchasing a quality album?

@lewm ,

Yes, it’s called Mystic Disc. Little place stuffed with albums. If you’re planning to be in that area any time let me know and I’ll give you the scoop on which restaurants are the best, especially if you like oysters. Love Deep River! That whole area is gorgeous. Planning on making reservations on the Essex Steam Train for their Fall Dinner Excursion. Gotta get those tickets early. Funny, I was just up Rt.9 a couple days ago. I grew up in Preston.

I'm not sure anyone has mentioned Goldmine rating scale for used records. This is important to know IMO.Learn it and you will know how much snap crackle & pop will be in those grooves. You can do this just by looking at the album. A good dealer/seller will grade the record properly. Unfortunately, the vinyl resurgence has brought a lot of people into the sales end who know little or noting about Goldmine. Their description says something like, "looks great" or "no skips". Some will offer a play graded album with their cheap blunt stylus TT which they will say sounds good. And it may ...to them. But a properly maintained and setup TT will show the flaws.The truth is you'd better stay away from those people.

I don't buy many today because I bought most of mine in the early 2000's. But I wouldn't buy/play anything less than a VG+.

Goldmine

Goldmine is fine as a guide to estimating condition, but some of the $ values they place on some LPs strike me as ridiculous (too high). That gives sellers the cache' to ask high prices using Goldmine as a reference.

@lewm  Don't you know that all records are very valuable now?

Seriously I  agree on value. I'm not sure I have ever used their value as a guide. But their grading scale is very good. Of all the used albums I bought back in the early 2000's, I made one bad purchase. The records had been well cared for and looked VG+-NM. I then learned about groove damage and how it sometimes goes unseen. I think I even payed $3-$4 apiece for them. That was expensive back then. I'm so glad I got back into vinyl early on before the resurgence. 

thankfully we learned that I am the only slob here, still - I am not sure I would touch thecarpathian's anally inspected items