Just before the start of the year, I submitted four Public Enemy vinyl records to Vintage Media Grading for review and slabbing. I received them back today after much anticipation. I'll be posting my results in the coming days, but I wanted to use this post as an overall review of my experience with @Vintage_Media_Grading. Important note: The opinions expressed herein are my own and VMG hasn't asked me to write a review.

Shown here is a sealed copy of the 1990 single "Welcome to the Terrordome", which I acquired last year for $30. I love this song because it represents one of the high water marks of Public Enemy's production style and Chuck D's lyrical talent. Albums are great but I almost exclusively collect singles for a few reasons: First, an incredible song deserves to stand alone as a musical achievement; second, musicians put as much effort into the cover art and photos as they did an album; and lastly, as a kid of the '90s, I'm nostalgic for those memories of going into Sam Goody or KMart and grabbing that amazing single you heard on the radio.

My copy graded out at a 7.5, which was broken down to a 7.0 cover, 8.0 spine, and 8.0 seal, each of which is very fair. The subgrade transparency is similar to Beckett sports card grading in that you can see the overall stats and know how your grade was derived. VMG slabs are awesome. They display like museum pieces and they're built like tanks. I feel like I could run this thing over and it wouldn't break.

The total cost to grade this record was roughly $50 all-in, which included grading plus shipping. Going back to a sports card grading comparison, I paid roughly $30 per card with PSA, so the cost scales with the added size and shipping considerations. The turnaround time from VMG was also reasonable - in fact, I submitted my vinyls the same day I submitted a stack of baseball cards to PSA and I coincidentally received them back on the same day! All in all I'm very happy with my experience and will probably submit some more records as I accumulate additional ones in the future.

Music grading is a new concept so there are tons of question marks for the future. The vinyl collecting community is by and large a lovably stubborn group and I'm sure most of them would hate that I rendered a record unplayable for eternity. Even so, I believe collectibles grading as a whole is an expanding market and that music grading will attract collectors like myself who don’t necessarily sit around listening to vinyl (did I mention that I don’t even own a record player?!). I also think music grading will eventually pull in the vinylheads once they realize that the primary focus of music grading is to slab the vinyls you'd never put into the record player because they're either sealed or too rare to risk damaging.

Even if music grading never catches on, however, I now own a stack of special records that can display beautifully on my wall – and isn’t that the ultimate point of collecting?

Picked up this crisp sealed vinyl copy of Public Enemy’s 1994 single “Give It Up”. Surprisingly, this song is Public Enemy’s highest-charting single on the Billboard 100, peaking at #33 in August 1994.
This is my favorite kind of sealed wax 😁