My BIGGEST MISTAKES Collecting Vinyl Records 

Your original take on Def Leppard was the correct one.

I know the feeling I'm listening to bands now that I had absolutely no interest in when I was young

My biggest mistake - buying any vinyl manufactured post 1985 - digital trash. Selling the lot of it now.

your comment about sealed original pressings is so true.... burnt once never again

My biggest mistake was repairing album sleeves with strips of sellotape. I did this when I was a teenager, so many years later I've discovered the sellotape has come off leaving an ugly brown stain that I can do nothing about. Nowadays I use pritt stick.

Done exactly the same with coins on the cartridge back in the 80s. If only we knew then what we know now. 😂😂😂. Still, it all added to our experience.

I bought vinyl all through the 80s in the UK. The only sealed records I saw were imports, all the UK albums and 12"s were out on the shelves unsealed. Now I'm seeing sealed 80s albums up for sale. I'm assuming shops unsealed them as a matter of course and I visited many different shops every week independents, chain (HMV etc) and Woolworths, Boots and such.

I'm 54 and for the "record", the first two records I ever bought with my 'own' money was Def Leppard - Pyromania and Quiet Riot - Metal Health; I still own them. It was what my friends and I were listening to. If I'm being very honest, my very first album was a gift I requested; Billy Joel - Glass Houses, but I was probably in the range of 10-12 and had not yet entered high school or discovered metal. In between those records, from my Uncle (my father's youngest brother) I received Back in Black, Zep IV and In through the Out Door. In high school, Motley Crue and eventually Iron Maiden would follow. Then the classic rock rabbit hole of Black Sabbath, Led Zep and The Doors. Grunge was my high water heyday. My listening is much more diverse these days; lots of indie, folk, rock (and all of the combo / derivations), jazz, metal, stoner rock, etc. All to say, at the time I to was terribly anti-80s sound and very judgmental of a lot of 80s music that wasn't hard rock. I still say much of it is plagued with 80s production but I've definitely since embraced some solid records and genres from back then that I wouldn't have at the time. Cheers!

Ahhh! The old coin on the head shell! LOL! I remember doing that in high school!! Thanks for the many tips! I always check my records, but the not buying sealed is a great perspective on the practice! I also was never a big fan of Metallica until more recently. Their black album got me interested and I now enjoy many of their older ones! Hope you are enjoying your summer!

Great advice. Perfect for new collectors. Good content. Thanks so much.

The only way to properly check a second hand album is PLAYING IT before you buy it. As most “damage” to albums is hard to see. I have pristine looking (even with my iPhone flashlight on it) vinyl that sounds crap with noise, pops, clicks etc. and albums that have clear scratches or whatever that sound perfect @The Joy of Vinyl Records

“Catalog Knowledge” - believing and trusting marketing claims without due diligence. Biggest regret - well intentioned record care best practices that harmed records in the long run. I dream of a class action suit against Discwasher, Mobile Fidelity, and other brush and solution record cleaning products. They do more harm than good to this day! (Kids, never wet clean records without a vacuum or ultrasonic cavitation cleaning machine…)

A big mistake I keep seeing in a record collectors group is buying very expensive new pressings and expensive reissues (most newbies) and then playing them on a cheap nasty system and then being told I’m a hardware SNOB! I’m 64 been buying records since I was 8, I def know what I’m doing and the only really stupid thing I’ve never done up till now is purchase a RECORD CLEANER! Recently got a SPINCARE and already am noticing a hell of a difference to old albums, even a 1958 Nat King Cole that my mother has sounded crisp and fresh amazing really…PLUS.. I’ve noticed much let crap being scrapped on my stylus.

I made the mother of all embarrassing mistakes. I left behind 2 sealed copies of The Beatles and Frank Ifield with the Beatles on the cover in the late 1970s. $5 each. Someone else bought it. They sold for $40K each. I think about it every day. Can't figure it out to this day.

Why are you surprised records last long when you don't change the stylus? When the diamond wears down, it doesn't suddenly turn into sandpaper. 😀Basically, as it wears, the sides get flatter and flatter, which means it can't track as well, which might lead to less high frequencies maybe uneven stereo balance etc. But it doesn't start wearing the vinyl more. In fact, possibly less. 😀(But don't quote me on that).

Many shops don't have decent lighting. Use your phone's flashlight function.

i would love to change my cartridge every year but at £3,200 that is beyond my reach. So a lesson learned is 'yes i can afford to buy it at the time but can i afford to regularly replace the cartridge even with a part exchange contract'?

I am wondering if you Use The CQ wireing setup. if not and you find your self hearing scratches and pops. The Cq or quad wireing setup will make you realize that most of what you thought/think of as mistakes are not really a mistake. all you need to do is swap your red/ wire wire your choice of wire and move the ground wires tho that channel. I connect both Ground/Negative wires together that way, you can /I can just move them together in one. you will take notice that there is an empty channel on mono tracks. which holds the Scratches pops, and etc. you can then edit out or keep the empty track. I often keep a copy of both so that way if somneone wants to hear what I have for evidence in what I have as for proof. I can show them. I change out my stulus these days, every Lp or Sis 45 rpms records this depends on if I copy/play bth sides of the disks. another item to consider, : what turntable and stylus you use. the Zenith 2g Can wear slower than a Pyle PLTTB1. IE the AT -95E stylus upgrade vs stock. I never look at what pressings a person buys as a mistake. I just, wonder why New pressings are not pressed as they used to be pressed! the sound has gone from the once known sound to.... NM... vs Sealed? I buy Sealed disks once in A blue moon... like one every Ten Years! Mike Kenedys Louisiana Lp and andy Kim's : How'd we ever get this way.

Lol! I think I've made most of those mistakes myself. Sharing these with everyone else will hopefully help the beginning collector. There's no wisdom without making and learning from mistakes. It's also part of the fun in this hobby.

My experience with Def Leppard is the same. I wasn't impressed as a teen, but now they are in my top 10 list.

Sealed records from long ago. I've had good experiences and bad. Several years ago I bought a copy of Steely Dan's "Pretzel Logic" from 1974 on Amazon. Bad mistake. When I got it I could tell that the shrink wrap had shrunk. I couldn't even play it because it was so warped. I didn't send it back because of the headache. Have a good Sunday.

GREAT VIDEO, WELL SAID.👍

I did the penny on the tonearm too, never changed my stylus, and never even cleaned my records, quite glad I no longer own too many of the records I bought as a teenager 🙈🤦‍♀️ Had the relationship music collection splitting too, that was fun, only difference was it was a big cd collection, not vinyl 🥴

I remember taping pennies to the top of the stylus on my suitcase player when I was a kid. Funny thing is, those old beat up records no longer skip😆

As an ex DJ the first thing I used to do with any record was to twist the inner sleeves so the records would be easier to access in a hurry. Big mistake! Fast forward 20 yrs and those records are crackly and dirty where they’ve been exposed.

Snobbery is sooo real I made 2 big mistakes when getting back into buying vinyl #1 bought records for a ridiculous amount money that I thought I could resell for more (not a single offer even at 50% discount) #2 bought records I desperately wanted for a lot of money. I since then saw both types for under $5. There is no correlation between quality and price.

My biggest mistakes include cleaning fluids - such as 1970's Disc Washer and Ball space age spray lubricant. The first would form into a gel, build up and drop on the LP and harden. The spray lubricant left an audible film - perhaps I didn't apply it correctly.

Back in the '70's, The Tonight Show's band leader Doc Severinsen advertised a product called Sound Guard that supposedly protected ones records against wearing out. I Sound Guarded all my favorite LPs from about 1976 onwards. It worked! Well, maybe. My old Wings, Genesis and The Jam LPs still sound great today. I can't be sure that just keeping them clean may have produced the same result. Side note-- there's no way in heck I would pay $65 for a used record (just buy the download) and I think that's the difference between a music lover and a record collector.

My first "big boy" system i bought in 1979 from Lafayette, speakers, receiver & TT. Cost me almost 1k which was big money and took me almost a year to pay off from layaway. I must have done something right because my vinyl survived relatively intact. Unfortunately, when i went in the Army, it was sold to a neighbor for about $500.00. I wish i still had it.

Mistake #1 is sometimes hard to avoid. I am like you with decades of collecting and know what to do in a used record store but I always find the lighting inferior or just bad and inspection is hard to do. I still continue to get home with that used record and when I see it under my track lighting which is focused on my TT that’s when I see the issues. Most times it is just surface light scratches or maybe loads of dust but every now and then it’s worse. Thems the changes we take. Usually it’s only the $10 or less bunch so not too painful. One thing I do know is when buying used 60’s , 70’s lps on quality old labels (Polygram, Capital, Decca) and others the record can look bad and yet play fine. Not true with newer pressings. Found an OG UK 1966 Jerry Lee Lewis “Live in Hamburg” from 64’ and it looked questionable but had that OG label so I brought it home. Wow sounds amazing and only slight sparkling ✨. I also use a mid level high end system so it picks up every thing.

Haha that's funny. As you started off talking about the first or second mistake, it reminded me of putting the coin on the headshell of my turntables not knowing any better. I just got back a week ago from Houston where I'm selling my dad's house down there. The house is a nice two-story four bedroom house, but it's more or less become a leftover storage place for family members that didn't take something with them as they moved through the years. Being legally blind, I can't exactly get down there very often and do a lot. I've been wanting to get down there for many years and try to find my 400 LPS that seemed to have disappeared. Personally, I think my sister threw most of them away when she lived In the house for about a year back about 10 years ago. Anyhow, I was able to find about 50 to 60 of my albums. I did not expect them to even play all the way through much less sound good. Being left in a house since the 1980s and then being in a unair-conditioned house (when nobody was living there) for decades ddn't leave me with much hope they would sound good. And didn't exactly take the best care of them in my teenage years because all you had to do was go buy another one if one got ruined. That mindset did not help me out. I was surprised that most of them are decent sounding with many of them sounding excellent still. The heat did not warp them. And about 20 of those LPs I found were laying flat and not standing up. I still can't believe they weren't just globs of melted wax. But here's the kicker! When I found the Acoustic Research. AR-3 speakers I didn't even think were there anymore, along with some other high-end speakers my dad had bought and used with his McIntosh equipment, I brought those back. They definitely need some work because I know I blew the AR-3 woofer on one speaker back in the 1980s. I actually brought back eight speakers that were from the 1970s through early 1980s. They all need some work (except one pair) I'm sure as well as recapping and you name it. But to find those heavy, classic speakers down there was the icing on the cake. If I had had half a brain back in the 1980s, I would not have been jamming on those speakers the way I did and I would not have blown any of them. Plus they would have been up here where I live today a long, long time ago. The stupidity of our youth, I guess... 🙂 Brian in Fort Worth 🎶

My favorite Def Leppard song is Let It Go. It's a mighty tasty riff.

aparently shrink wraping can shrink even more over the years and can warp records so buying a 30 or 40 year old record still sealed could be a big mistake, and i never liked Def Lepard but they where on the same bill as Whitesnake actualy Whitesnake where the suport band realy enjoyed Whitesnake but after 3 Def Lepard songs we went to the Bar and got Drunk and i still do not like them 😊

Anything you did that seems stupid or ignorant before the internet was around needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Knowledge was so much harder to come by in those days!

Greetings ☕️ Yup,if you’ve been in this game (it’s been a looong time for moi’) you’ll eventually come across everything you’ve stated . You and yours have a great weekend 🍻

My cartridge is a vintage Pickering with the original stylus. It came with the turntable that I bought used from a guy selling stuff for his dad, with no idea how much use it had. But I’ve kept it because it’s a very nice cartridge with a hard to find stylus. I’ve wanted to replace it, but can’t decide what route to take in doing so. What are your thoughts on aftermarket replacements for vintage styli versus getting an original stylus retipped?

My ex kept the Hifi system …..:-)

you know, in many cases visual checking is not much of a help...i bought some visually perfect records but at the end of the day they were cracks and pops fest, be it from bad stylus or badly set turntable...

I have wasted way to much money on used albums that I have inspected before buying that were borderline and took a chance on. Also if the cover is bad, won't buy it anymore. Has to be in near mint minimum and a decent cover for me as now. My wife loves going to record stores and will bring me a stack that I have to go through each one and cull out the bad ones, can't really complain, but its a pain sometimes.

I love feeling like I am not the only one that made innocent, but costly mistakes over the last 40 years of my vinyl collecting journey.

I’m 62. I hated Metallica until recently. Now I regret all these years of not wanting to give the LPs a spin. As the coin on the stylus cartilage goes, us older people have done it multiple times.

Do you have a first press Hysteria yet? I’ve bought a few and have a spare.

My mistakes: -- I always chased sound quality, but did not know that no two pressings sound exactly the same. And in many cases, the sound quality can vary wildly. Growing up, there was no eBay or discogs, etc. So I would go into Korvettes or Sam Goody, and purchase what they had. Those were my only choices. There was no where, locally, to purchase used records. I saw the imprinted scribbling in the wax on the run-off section of the record (between the last song and the label). I did not give it much thought, because there was no one to ask. So I made mistakes, owning mostly lousy sounding pressings. But what other choice did I have? To a significant degree, finding great sounding pressings is still an ordeal. I find visual gradings by the sellers to not be much help, because it is impossible to see how a record will sound. Of course, you can see when a record is a mess. But any shiny, clean record can sound amazing or can sound lifeless. Two visually mint records can sound completely different. In fact, side 1 can sound heavenly, and side 2 can sound dull -- on a single pressing. -- I never dialed in the tone-arm or cartridge on my Technics' turntable. It was pre-installed by the store. As far as I was concerned, nothing else was necessary. I knew that adjustments could be made. But I neither realized how important those adjustments were, and I assumed that the manufacturer (or store personnel) knew what they were doing. Even with the above issues, I loved every minute of my records -- all of them, playing them on my Sony receiver with my turntable that was probably not dialed in too good. Now, I find it tormenting to listen to anything other than excellent sounding pressings. That curse has left me with a rather small record collection. But the best of my collection raises the hair on the back of my neck. I think I had more fun when I did not know any better. But when I listen to my best sounding pressings, it is heavenly. For people that spend a briefcase of cash on a turntable, tone-arm, cartridge, phono-amp, and the rest... you are getting only 50% to perhaps 80% of your stereo's potential. With the hard to find amazing sounding pressings, your stereo will sound like never before. But then you might be doomed like I am.

But diamonds are forever! I have to start keeping a stylus log. I usually try to do it once a year, as well. Thankfully, I have never had to mix my record collection with a girlfriend's. The perks of being unattractive, haha. The funny thing about Def Leppard is you were not the only collector passing over them. Remember when those were plentiful dollar-bin records? I should've scooped them up. I have come to like them a lot more listening to Joe Elliot's excellent SiriusXM show.

The biggest mistake I see people making when they collect vinyl is buying the same tired music they've been listening to for 40 or more years. I'm a boomer and I can't believe how many people are hung up on the 70s and (putting on my deepest, FM-radio-est DJ voice) Classic Rock. It's tired and boring. Maybe instead of trying to figure out which pressing of Aja they should get next, they can figure out which post-millennium band they want to try on for size.

I agree with you on the Metallica Rick, I thought I was the only one 😅

Buy used record, not look at it, get home and find it's the wrong record in the sleeve.

What a great video. I am new to your channel and I enjoyed it. I have always had a very good experience buying vinyl on ebay. Never had any issues except within the last six months or so. This has happened to me a lot on ebay lately and the issue is this. I always look for albums that are in VG+ cndition or mint or near mitn on ebay. And I have maybe bought about 13 records since the beginning of the year. The seller says VG+ or Mint in the listing. So, I say gret I will buy it. So, I receive the record in the mail and guess what???? The Record is not VG+, near mint or mint, it is good. All I hear is a ton of pops, clicks and static and crackly noises, so I contact the seller and if the record can be returned, I return it which is great, but, this has been happening all the time in the past 6 months, so I put a hault on buying anymore, because it is very frustrating. I wonder if there are others that this has happened too. Especially when a seller says, Visually graded" I won't buy it because a record that looks mint to the naked eye does not mean it is, You have to play it to find out.

My partner and I keep our records separate because we mostly- have dissimilar tastes.

My biggest "mistake". Is that I listen to much on vinyl reviewers. 😂 That I sorurce and buy "that wonderfull" album.😮 Yeh it is all good and evrything but it is actually not in my genre of music!😢 So it sounds fine and I lern what OTHERS is apriciating and what they think sounds good.😅 But nothing that i really like and to my taste.😢 I disregard my own prefered genre of music!😢 One small reason is also when crate digging used LPs then it is also (of course) "older" recordings when my taste is more genre that is younger/later. I mean if you like mosart then you have heaps of LPs that has been recorded troughout many many decades. But if your genre of somthing newer and later genre then good luck with finding that as used LPs. Closer to 0.1% chance..😢 Yeh, I know I am looking in the wrong place and are to easely influenced.😢😂

I absolutely loved that you didn’t care for Metallica, or Def Leppard for most of your impressionable years, there’s still hope you’ll come back to the sane side lol!

1: Starting! 😂

One thing is clear : you love music or, was seduced by it, like most of us were (lol). When Napster and LimeWire were booming, we jumped on it (wha wha free music !) BUT, the quality was chicken, or cheezy. Today the music lover has to learn many things to EXTRACT the music and enjoy it. You have to extract, then upsample the files, and playback with a decent DAC. Maybe in the future they will invent a better way, who knows ? 😄 From what I heard up to now, I will never go back to vinyl again.

Not buying CDs? Ha! just kidding. Vinyl rocks!

I can’t disagree with any of comments. I think mistakes were far easier to make in a pre internet age. Your peer group, your local record store and hi fi salesman were mostly your only source of information. Later, more accessible equipment reviews were available through hifi magazines. Today there is really no excuse for mistakes other than leaving your favourite records with an ex. Best, Pat

my wife doesn't care about vinyl, so no problem with #3 for me. ;)

I regret being a jerk about music I didn’t like, but I don’t regret not liking the music. The older I get the more I just want to shut up and keep my opinions to myself.

well, good thing is these mistakes are not the end of the world if you make them and most can be easily corrected.

2:36 please tell me this is an AI generated image...I know Meat Loaf had some popularity at one time...but WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD PUT UP ALL THOSE MEAT LOAF FLAGS???

The biggest mistake is they're not on CD 😆👎

Buying the Wiggles or Sesame Street.

My partner isnt interested in psychedelia so its no problem. Mistake is to buy so expensive records instead of give to charity Greetings from Stockholm....

When I watch these record collector videos. I still find that most if not all of them like the same kind of music. Mostly Rock, some Jazz and Heavy Metal. Nobody likes Disco 🪩, R&B, Alternative or Electronic. No pun intended but, these videos are like a broken record. I will never like Metallica, Def Leopard or for that matter very much any kind of Rock Music. And I’m even older than you. 😢😢. I also buy a lot of vinyl still. Mostly Pop music. I have a vintage Marantz 6300 direct drive record player. The only record player I have ever owned. With a Shure M44-7 stylus. So my Disco music 🎼 of the 1970’s still sound great 👍.

How about the biggest mistake in the title?

Wrote stars on the label… sounds like you dodged a bullet man