I buy a lot of music in general.

In my experience I've found that used laserdiscs are nearly always graded more accurately than vinyl LP records.
I'm referring to both the condition of the disc, but particularly the sleeve.

Many LP sellers would grade their sleeves as near mint even with some ringwear, edgewear, stickers, spine splits etc.
To me that is a real turn off. I collect vinyl as much for the artwork as the records. I find it is easy getting a record that plays ok but very tough getting sleeves in the condition I desire.

I realise LP sleeves were often quite flimsy and generally not as well looked after as laserdiscs but I think there is still a huge discrepancy in how many music sellers are grading items. Having been burned a few times I would almost never buy a used LP record costing more than £20 unless I see some photos first because there is just so much variation in the overall condition. One man's near mint is another man's very good and they are both adamant they are grading correctly. I pride myself in always trying to grade things accurately. If it's rough, I'll say its rough so you are under no illusion about the conditon but the same is most certainly not true of many LP sellers who seem to be selling what is literally a load of junk.

Anyone else encounter similiar experiences?

While I'm not a buyer of vinyl I do pickup a disc or two and try to make a few bucks.

The hardest part for me is the grading system is so strange with vinyl that I can't even really figure it out, and I came from understanding how comics grade.

They make grading too hard for things like vinyl, comics and even coins so that others can't just sell them or buy them to enjoy.
A lot of rip off as you have posted before with people switching the records behind the table and such, its just the collector market, lots of bad apples or apples who don't know what they're doing and wing it.

The bit I could never understand is they don't allow EX (excellent) grade on discogs.
So you've got M, NM, VG+ (which I hate), VG, G..... anything lower is rubbish so I wont even bother listing!

VG+ is really EX but that's not how people perceive it elsewhere so many sellers don't like using it, so you end up with tonnes of NM stuff which is definitely over graded as it is actually EX or below. More often than not it is way below!

So I bought a little 30 year old gatefold 3 inch CD single recently.
It was graded M for MINT - the highest possible grade you can give an item.
It arrived with the front jacket cut completely off and glued back to the back of the jacket - what a mess!
How can any serious seller grade this as MINT?
So I contacted the seller and his reply was " I have done this more often with cardboard cover, because I liked it better."
Well I personally prefer my card covers unmodified and in their original form, not cut up and glued back together.
The glue was everywhere too -even on the back of the part glued back on. It was just a nightmare purchase!

Christ, what an idiot.

What rating did you give him?

Well if he refuses to do anything about it I will be giving him a NEGATIVE feedback just on principle.
Amazingly this same seller has no NEGATIVES but about 20 NEUTRALS currently.
How they have managed to survive this long without getting a NEGATIVE is incredible.
I think the only possible explanation is the guy is at least polite even if his reply beggars believe still!

What do the "neutral" comments say?

I wouldn't be surprised if they only gave neutral instead of negative because their requirement for the latter is not getting anything at all, as opposed to just "significantly less than described".

A few of the neutrals:

Seller confirmed there were no stickers on the sleeves. But i received 2 out of 3 records with stickers.
The media and the cover wasnt mint. Was very good. The description of the item was wrong.
No Mint .dirty and used .for me there is a difference
Record and sleeve weren't Mint. But seller reacted positively and offered a compensation.

I collect only a few vinyls because the discrepancy between the description and reality is often enormous (or I should say 99% of times) and it freaks my out!
You can't stock tons of vinyls in dusty boxes without proper sturdy plastic jewel cases to avoid any kind of damage never the less if you pretend to offer them for sale.
A collector purchases the whole package, not just the disc, so a better attention is highly appreciated.
I attended many music fairs here in Italy and the way sellers store and expose their vinyls makes no sense at all. They are collectors items, not fruit!
A completely different story in Japan. They are stored properly and graded accurately.

I totally agree.

I was in Bulgaria recently in December with snow and slush all over the place and there was a whole street outside with books and some records for sale in open air stalls. Some of the better sellers had put their books in plastic but still its not an ideal way to sell this kind of merchandise. Is it any wonder paper has foxing when it has been sitting in a damp box outside in freezing cold temperatures for months on end!

Before the advent of the internet I regularly visited record fairs all over the UK, especially some of the bigger ones in places like Birmingham, London, but also some of the smaller venues in towns. I probably visited a hundred or more in 1993-1995 alone. Back then I was mainly buying CDs, 12" and 7" singles. When I see the crates they often used to lug all this stuff around it should come as no surprise why the covers have so much damage. I always found the best stuff I bought came from small independent record shops who I left my want lists with and who would contact me when they found some items of interest. There were some great shops in places like Leighton Buzzard, Northampton, Luton, Bath, Bedford and Aylesbury and of course London if you hunted down the small shops further afield. Beanos in London was amazing to visit when it was open - one of the largest second hand stores in Europe at one time.

I find grading to be hard whatever the product is. I think I've felt with sellers who don't really grade right to some degree like scratches on a disc when they rate very good or something.

Probably not as bad as this book I bought online once upon a time.

No that's pretty bad! It's so puffed up having soaked up so much moisture.

With so many cardboard LD sleeves in my home I've noticed changes in the absorption and release of water vapour. There's so much surface area of paper, maybe 1000 times what a typical house might have that it can soak up vast quantities of moisture that would otherwise go unnoticed for a while. As soon as I turn the heat on this stored moisture is then released back into the atmosphere very quickly and condenses on the windows. To counteract this I keep a dehumidifier running on a regular basis and never let the heat fall too low. That way the paper sleeves are bone dry so no big reservoirs of moisture are building up ready to be released.

Amazing, sounds like running a museum. I guess when you get to 10,000 titles the effects of sheer scale start kicking in.

I took photos of the packaging it came in too, but couldn't be bothered to upload them because all this happened years ago, but the box was completely smashed in addition to being similarly soaked and so soft I could just jam my fingers through it and tear it apart with my bare hands.

The worst part of it was that the store I bought it from gave me nothing but a dingy 5% coupon for it!