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The 1950s - 1960s produced some of the best sounding 33 1/3 long playing vinyl records ever made. A number of factors contributed to this phenomenon: the use of tube (valve) equipment which has a rich musical sound, the use of few well placed microphones, highly talented sound engineers, and of course, exceptional acoustics in many of the concert halls where the performance was recorded.
And regardless of the sound, some of the most celebrated and legendary musicians, conductors and singers recorded LPs in this era. Combine all these factors with the beautiful cover art, interesting liner notes, and quality materials, you have a highly desirable collectible item.
One of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects of preparing this collection for the website is the grading process. Being careful and conservative by nature, I take great pains to present the vinyl in the most accurate light, though I know grading by its very nature is extremely subjective, and others might grade these records differently.
The examples below describe what you should see and hear when you play records from RareVintageVinyl.com. Appropriate record gradings and descriptions of the covers are noted in the detail pages of our offerings.
| Grade | Description |
|---|---|
| 100 | A sealed record or an unplayed record. This grade may also be used for a record that seems to stand out from the grades below as having an exceptional quality, such as a very tight spindle hole. In such cases I will add an explanation to the description field of the record's detail page. |
| 97-99 | The record has a beautiful shiny sheen, no visible scratches or surface marks, and plays with quiet surfaces. For the most part, this is my top grade and denotes records of investment quality. |
| 95-96 | The record has no scratches but may have a few inaudible surface marks or scuffs. There may be some faint surface noise, usually in the quiet parts. |
| 93-94 | A well cared for used record showing some signs of wear. It may have slight scuffs or a couple very light small scratches that cause random tics or light repeating tics lasting 5-10 seconds. There will be occasional slight surface noise. |
| 90-92 | A used record showing moderate wear. It will have some surface marks, numerous fine-line scuffs, a few light scratches. There will be sporadic tics, clicks and possibly a few repeating tics lasting 10-20 seconds. There is moderate surface noise. |
Records that do not meet these standards are not sold on RareVintageVinyl.com, but may from time to time be offered as free items with a minimum purchase.
Once you have decided on what records you want to purchase, simply proceed with the shopping cart process. You can use your credit card to pay using Paypal, whether you have a PayPal account or not because accounts are no longer required to use their secure payment process. Please contact us if you want to pay with other methods.
We try our best to be accurate in grading and have been successful most of the time. At the end of the day however it is you that must be satisfied. If for any reason you are not satisfied with your purchase you may return the item(s) for a full refund. You will need to return them in the original packaging and in the same condition as you received them and at your expense. Once we receive the original shipment we will issue you a full refund of what you originally paid. If the condition is grossly misrepresented (like a major scratch not mentioned) then we can also refund your return shipping cost.
We pack all records professionally using sturdy record boxes, cardboard fillers, and bubble wrap. Records are removed from jacket and placed in Nagoka rice paper sleeve inserted into an outer poly bag along with the jacket and inner sleeve. The package is taped with heavy reinforced paper tape, then sealed with clear packing tape. The result is a sturdy and strong pack which will protect your records in transit to you.
Standard shipping in USA is by US Post Office media mail at $4.00 for 1st record.
In progress
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Hello, I'm Christopher Gilmore, owner of RareVintageVinyl.com. That's me in the photo with my wife, Alexis, sitting by the fountain of St. Sulpice Cathedral (site of the Mercury Dupre Organ recordings of 1959) in Paris during European trip in May, 2000. My eBay id "chrialex" is derived from the first four letters of our first names. I have been supplying fine quality vinyl records to collectors worldwide since 1987.
My collecting of vinyl LPs started when I acquired some moderately high-end audiophile equipment in 1987. I bought Martin Logan CLS electrostats which I am still using now along with the following:
Most of the records here in my collection are audiophile records. In the dictionary at hand as I write this, audiophile is defined as "One with an ardent interest in high fidelity sound reproduction." I would say this definition applies to me. But I wasn't always this way. I grew up with music around me. In the late 1940s and early 1950s my parents listened to 78rpm records. I remember playing some of them myself, especially the flamenco records whose sound of the guitar captivated my attention. I would play them over and over. Later as I was growing up I listened to classical lp records.
In the early 1960s I began buying records myself. I remember going to Campus Records in Berkeley and learning a lot about recorded music from Ron Penndorf. As time passed I went through phases of listening to different genres of music such as rock, international, and new age. These were my music exposure years. By the mid 1980s I was introduced to another way of listening to music on a friend's high end sound system. There, I heard the music as high fidelity sound that was very close to the experience of hearing live music in a concert hall. I still listened to the music, but I heard detailed instrumentation and sound stage which gave me a different experience of hearing recorded music. I began to want a sound system that revealed a dynamic sound when playing LP records.
Thus, I became an audiophile. I began to look for LPs that had good sound. I heard MFSL half-speed mastered, Nautilus direct-to-disc and other audiophile recordings. Then I discovered that many of the older stereo vinyl LPs frequently had very dynamic sound reproduction: RCA LSC, Mercury SR90, London blueback, Decca SXL, EMI ASD stereo records of the late 1950s to early 1960s. I have since been looking for these "audiophile" records and I offer you some nice examples of all these types of collectible audiophile records from my collection on this website.
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