How to tell if the record is worn out?

Dewald,
I always clean/reclean, even new albums. I have a lovely Loricraft, so it is quiet and easy. I use any of 4 or 5 chemicals depending on dirt or mold issues. The last 2 passes are always RRL Deep wash followed by the Vinyl wash.
After all that, you can still have a crappy pressing. I was heart broken yesterday with a 1st pressing UK St. Pepper mono. It has to go back to England. The is seller is a nice guy and all, but I after 2 songs I knew it was shot.

I clean with the RRL fluids as well on a KAB EV1 and have also had records cleaned on a Monks so I know what a clean record looks like. As I said above, if it looks too good to be true, it usually is. When a 20-50 year old record has an unusually high, extremely shiny "gloss" to it (far beyond what a record cleaned on a good machine using RRL does) and shows virtually no imperfections (I'm not averse to imperfections-many of them are not audible), it is indicative of some kind of cosmetic treatment that may or may not effect sound quality. And based on my experience, I'd say that "cosmetic treatment" may do one of two things: 1) hide extensive groove damage that might be visible had the record not been treated or 2) literally cement every bit of crap into the grooves rendering the record (at least from my perspective) unplayable. I've bought a record (fortunately only one and for $10) like this at a show that looked flawless and even after 3-4 cleanings using the RRL showed absolutely no improvement with respect to outrageously high surface noise (not actual groove damage). That record had definitely been treated and it wasn't with something that did anything good for it.

it is possible to tell if a record is worn by inspecting the raised edgeand the trail off, as well as the paper label, and wear or marks around the spindle hole. never buy anything graded less than mint/mint-/or near mint, unless you are prepared for disappointment, or unless it is very,very rare....all the vg+ 'this and that' is BS. REMEMBER, a`cleaning will not hide wear and tearif you look beyond the grooves.

>>it is possible to tell if a record is worn by inspecting the raised edgeand the trail off<<

No sorry. Very bad advice.

This tells you nothing about the groove structure and any damage that may exist.

Thank you.

Overhang, this sounds suspicious to me. I would not give up on those records quite yet. In my experience of collecting many 40 and 50 year old records, most can be returned to a very acceptable if not outstanding quality assuming there are no obvious scratches or other damage - which you indicate there are not. The biggest problem I have found on otherwise mint records is from those mis-guided individuals who tried to remove what was probably tape hiss or other recorded noise by using "Groove Glide" or a similar type of product. This is death to a record. I have spent untold hours trying to remove the effects of this from some records with no complete success. But in my experience these records will have a very recognizable and tell-tale dull appearance from the application of this material and all the dust and grime it attracts. This does not appear to be the case with your records. First, of course, you must be completely certain that the cartridge setup is accurate. Any actual groove damage can be verified by microscopy, see this site.

http://www.micrographia.com/projec/projapps/viny/viny0200.htm

If you don't have access to a microscope to determine this, I may be able to help but I would suggest multiple cleanings first. Again, vinyl records are amazingly resistant to groove damage when appropriate playback equipment is used but there is a (small) percentage of records out there that look good but are hopelessly damaged. In my experience, the percentage is nothing like the number you quote. It is more often a setup or cleaning problem on my end.