Listing a crate of records on eBay: what a photograph can tell you, and what it cannot
A record is an easier listing than a comic in one way and harder in three. Easier, because the sleeve is twelve inches of flat cardboard with the artist and title printed large. Harder, because most of what a buyer pays for is where the camera is not: the disc inside the sleeve, the matrix in the run-out groove, and the difference between a 1971 pressing and a 1977 one that look the same from the front.
What eBay's Records category asks for
Vinyl sits in category 176985, Music > Records. The aspects
worth filling are Artist, Release Title, Record Label, Catalog Number, Format,
Type, Speed, Record Size, Release Year, Genre, Style, Edition, Material, Color,
Features, Country of Origin, Record Grading, Sleeve Grading, Language and
Composer. The category also offers Producer, which Point and Sell leaves
empty.
Four you cannot skip: Artist, Release Title, Record Grading and Sleeve Grading. The first two are what a buyer searches. The grades are what sellers leave blank and then answer twenty times in messages, and the disc grade sets the price. A sealed record needs only the sleeve grade, since there is no disc to grade.
Format is always Record and Material is always
Vinyl; they exist so the category's filters work. Fill them.
Color deserves a sentence. Coloured vinyl is something buyers filter on, so a red pressing with Color left blank is invisible to the people most likely to pay extra for it. The default is Black, and it is right so often that the wrong one is easy to miss.
Grading: two grades, and neither comes off a photograph
Records grade on the Goldmine scale, twice: once for the disc, once for the sleeve. M, NM, VG+, VG, G+, G, F, P. eBay's spellings are the long ones, Near Mint (NM or M-) and so on, and it has separate fields for each because a near mint record in a split sleeve and a beaten record in a clean one are different objects at different prices.
eBay's list is not quite Goldmine: it adds Excellent (EX) and Worn (W) and has no Poor. The record grading guide lines the two up grade by grade.
You cannot grade the disc from a photo of the sleeve, because the disc is inside it. Even out of the sleeve, the light scuffs that separate VG+ from VG show at an angle under a bright light, not in a flat overhead shot.
So the grade is yours. Grade conservatively; the cost of grading high is returns. Set your two default grades once for the crate you have, and only touch the exceptions.
Sealed is its own case. Sealed means Brand New on eBay and there is no disc grade, and a buyer who opens it and finds a warp still bought a sealed record. Say factory sealed and let photos of the shrink wrap do the talking.
The year on the sleeve is not the year of the album
This is the easiest way to write a wrong listing.
A 1977 reissue of a 1971 album usually carries the 1971 copyright line, because the copyright belongs to the recording. The catalogue number, the label logo and the run-out etchings date the PRESSING. Both years are defensible answers to "Release Year", and buyers search for both.
In a set of 56 records from other sellers' listings, the year printed on the sleeve matched the year the seller typed on 9 of 45. That is not an error rate. It is two different questions, honestly answered.
Pick one and be consistent. If you sell mostly reissues, the printed year is the one you can show in a photo. If you sell mostly originals, they are the same number anyway.
Catalogue numbers have no check digit
A serious buyer searches the catalogue number: SD 7208 finds one
pressing in a way "Led Zeppelin IV" never will. It is printed on the spine, the
back cover and the centre label, usually in three slightly different forms.
Nothing catches a mistake in it. An ISBN and a UPC have check digits. A
catalogue number is a string a label chose in 1971, and a misread digit looks
just as plausible as the right one: 1494 MF read off a small 45
label that said 1694 MF.
Photograph the centre label, not just the back cover. The number is printed largest there.
What to photograph, in what order
Four shots a record, every record, in this order.
- The front of the sleeve. The listing's first photo, and the one that identifies the record.
- The back of the sleeve. The catalogue number, the label, the barcode if there is one, the country, and the track listing.
- The centre label. The catalogue number again, larger, plus the pressing marks a collector looks for.
- Whatever the record needs to show. The disc out of its sleeve, a gatefold open, an insert, a seam starting to split.
Give every record the same number of shots. Photos are sorted into records by the count, so a record shot five times when the rest got four pushes every record after it out by one.
Do not turn a sleeve upright to look tidy. Send the photos as shot.
Packing a record
A record needs a mailer that does not crush: a stiffened record mailer, with the disc taken out of the sleeve and slid in beside it, which stops the disc splitting the sleeve seam if the parcel is dropped. Until you weigh your own, Point and Sell's defaults are 1 lb 4 oz for a single LP in a mailer with pads, 14 oz for a 10 inch, 6 oz for a 7 inch single in a small mailer, and 4 lb in a 14 x 14 x 4 inch box for a box set.
Records go on your default shipping policy in Settings. Put whichever eBay policy you ship records on there.
What Point and Sell does with a crate
It reads a crate from your photos: four shots a record by default, or whatever number you set. It fills the identity and pressing details from what is printed, then builds the eBay file. It copies the catalogue number and never guesses one. It never grades: a batch does not go out until the record and sleeve grades are yours.
A barcode or catalogue number read off the sleeve is checked against Discogs' catalogue. A match confirms the album, and a number that belongs to another artist on the same label, or is one digit off this record's own, is flagged on the review screen. A match never names your pressing, so the artist, title and catalogue number on every row are still yours to check against the sleeve. A barcode that fails its check digit is refused until you retype or clear it.
What it does not do: records go to eBay, to Whatnot, and to Discogs as an inventory file (see the Discogs inventory CSV guide, and the Discogs eBay integration guide for selling the same records on both); Shopify refuses them. There are no record lots. Shoot a box, the page that counts your shots on a phone, does not take records, so photograph the crate and then upload. There is no price guide for records, so every row needs a price from you. And no record listed from here has been through a live eBay upload yet, so check the first listing of your first crate before you send the rest.
Try it on a crate · Try one record free, no email · More guides
Sources
The eBay aspect names and the category id were read off the Records category's browse filters and live listings on 12 September 2026. The year figure is from 56 records read from other sellers' eBay listing photos on 12 September 2026. Goldmine is the record trade's own scale.