LP's... Do they sound better now than 30 yrs ago?

Maybe it's good that we don't know some of those strories or they would've  given us heart attack.

^^ Quite rightly so. ^   :^)

Hard to put a finger on when the mass market players started sounding good, straight off the shelf, could have been around the late 70's with the Quartz locked Japanese players? Some of the old idler drives sound amazing when replinthed into a solid base. (Anyone out there replinthed an old Elac 50H or 770H, you'll know they can sound pretty good, but not so in orig hollow box).
I remember when buying my first low end audiophile tt the advice I was given "want twice the quality, pay 10 x the price!"

Here's a take on modern remasters: https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/47sbx6/opinions_on_bowie_vinyl_remasters/

The trends in competing album formats from the late '60s to the early 90s could explain varying levels of wear and tear on original LPs. From the '50s to the '70s, a needle in a groove was by far the dominant format for personal music, and it shows when you look at original pressings at thrift shops. There were even record players for cars and for kids in this era.

In the '60s LPs had increasing competition from 8-tracks, Album Oriented Rock (AOR) format was introduced in 1967 and continues to the present. Cassettes quickly replaced the 8-tracks in the '70s and became dominant all the way into the '90s. In 1990, cassette sales in the US were still at 442 million units. That may partially explain why my 1980s 99-cent thrift shop LPs sound so good (but it's also obvious that the recording and mastering quality was generally better by then).

So my point is, playing 45s and LPs were the dominant format for playing music in the '50s and '60s. By the late '60s through the '90s, 8-track, cassette, and AOR variously competed for playback, no doubt reducing the wear on pop LPs from those decades.