eHow launches Android app: Get the best of eHow on the go.
Summary: This grading scale represents the entire range of record conditions. Records receive separate grades for the vinyl and the cover. Learn more about "Goldmine Magazine" grading standard for vinyl and cover condition in this free record collecting series from a professional disc jockey.
Justin Cohen is a disc jockey from Northampton, Mass. He has DJed regularly at public and private functions since 2004, and had a weekly radio show on Valley Free Radio WXOJ from...read more
"All right, right now I'm just going to give you an overview of the different grades of the Goldmine Record grading system. Now, the very top is Mint, so you might think that Mint means good condition; Mint doesn't mean good condition, it means perfect. I'll go into that more specifically in each segment. We've got Mint, and then Near Mint, and then we've got Very Good, and Very Good , which are very similar, but of course there's slight degrees between them. There's Good and Good, and then you get Fair, and then Poor. So the Goldmine Recording Grading System actually refers to not only the records themselves, which is mainly what you look at, but it actually refers to the covers as well. The covers and the sleeves that you keep the records in. So I'm going to, in each of these segments, go into how well the actual records are on the system, but also how well the covers are on the system."