Vinyl Records In Shrink Wrap, Should You Keep Them Sealed? - Tasty Records Altrincham 

Wonderful not many people can appreciate this

As someone who worked for Virgin and was responsible for shrink wrapping the records I would say that the mintness can’t always necessarily be guaranteed as there’s a remote chance that we might have played that actual record in the shop. Or it may have fallen out in the stock room. I’d say with similar reservations that a factory sealed record is more likely to be mint. It’s a tough grading decision and some might argue that no record can ever be described as mint, I’ve had this argument so many times.

I have never seen shrink wrapping off gassing. That is new to me. No warping is a very serious problem with new records and tight shrink wrap

I doubt anyone in 84 would of thought of records as investment property. Remember before speculators and consumers stated jacking up valuations records had reached a low point in the 2000's. People were practically giving them away.

without even watching a second of this just based on the title and artwork all i can say is…. YES. OPEN THEM. OF COURSE. OPEN THEM. I buy music to listen to, not to put on my shelf and stare at. I can’t believe this is even a question. Now I will watch your video and maybe eat my words (but I doubt it.)

But how to tell if they are new and have not been played. On the open packages

Wait what are we protecting the packaging? Or the vinyl? Is this a collector thing protecting the packaging?

The shrink made me think

Unless it is very rare, spin that baby...

Keeping records in the original shrink would be a good idea in a perfect world, but the wrap wasn't intended to be kept on forever, a lot of records in shrink suffer plastic migration as do records in the old plastic outer sleeves that people used..polythene sleeves are best...