Best places to find vinyl

I have one of the best and largest LRS in the USA about 30 minutes from myself.

Their prices are very fair to start with but they also when overstocked throw some very Good stuff in the bargain bins at $1 each.

My last visit I bought 217 albums this way... Lol.

Flea markets around here have just vastly overpriced junk, not even worthy of the $1 bin but all seem to think ALL vinyl is now worth a fortune and charge accordingly.

I have bought some rareties from EBay and Discogs to complete collections but it can be a crap shoot for sure.

Just once I responded to a local Craigslist ad for a small collection of rock albums which were described as very good with little play.

So I trekked. 25 miles to see them and was pretty embarrassed to have to tell the guy that I would not be buying any of them as the condition of the vinyl was very poor(scratches, dirty is a different story) and he needed to revise his ad instead of wasting people a time.

That did not go over too well and we parted on unpleasant terms and I even received a few nasty text from him over the next week's. Ignored them all and they stopped.

First and last time will look on Craigslist for vinyl!

Depends on what you mean by reliable?

Discogs is good along with eBay but I would always in your mind downgrade their record grading a notch and you should be all set.

So those pair are reliable in that you will get items that may be very hard to find elsewhere, they might not be exactly as they are depicted in grading and you may have to pay silly money for them!

Agreed on that cleeds!

I bought a job lot of 217 vinyl from my LRS for $200 and even after cleaning I had made up in my mind how they were going to sound from visual.

As per your comments there are a few that I also thought about just throwing away from visual that played straight and true with nary a pop or click.

And ones that looked like never been played that were of lesser SQ than the aforementioned.

It’s a strange world.