Ebay LP Purchases


I am just getting back into vinyl after many years. There are a number of albums from the 1970's I would like to (re)purchase. What has been your experience on buying used vinyl on ebay? Any tips or warnings? Do sellers overstate the condition? Thanks in advance.
teeshot
My experience has been mostly good. Stick to reputable sellers. Also, try www.gemm.com. Nothing beats being able to inspect the record before buying, but sometimes you can't get what you want locally. I looked and looked for a copy of Pentangle's first album to no avail in my local record shops and found one from a seller in Italy. It arrived in one week in pristine condition as advertised and for a very good price. YMMV
No sooner do I post my positive experience when I get a sealed copy of a record with a small bubble in the middle of one track that would surely tear the stylus off my cartridge if I were to play it. I don't think you have recourse on a sealed LP from a private seller. Well, at least it was only a $10 record. That's the way it goes sometimes.
My Ebay LP buying experience has been very positive. My interest is in jazz from mostly the 50s through 70s. I could wait my entire life and never see an obscure album that I want in a used LP store, but I can go on Ebay and often find it right away. I have certainly purchased a few records where the condition was not up to the rating, but these have been surprisingly rare. I only deal with sellers with 98% or higher rating and I generally stick with US sellers just for reasonable shipping charges.

I find that I would much rather buy used records on Ebay than new records from the big mail order houses. The new records will probably have fewer ticks and pops, but the sound on the old records is nearly always superior.

As for the comment about only buying sealed records, this obviously depends on the music genre. If you want older records, they were all from the days before shrink wrap. More importantly, sealed records are often reissues, and it's just a plain fact that early issues nearly always sound better. So if you limit yourself to sealed records, you are often sacrificing sound quality.