Unfortunately and IME the only way to truly determine the condition of a record is to play it! I recently acquired what looked like a Mint copy of a little known Direct to Disc. This LP was graded Mint minus, and looking at the sleeve and the record, the grading was correct. The record was cleaned with a Ultra Sonic cleaner and played. Result..tremendous hash and noise, particularly between tracks. Very sad, as the record has great potential and is hard to source. Someone in the past had played the record with a worn stylus and not realized the damage caused.
Second hand vinyl surface damage.
Most analogue enthusiasts enjoy perusing and buying second hand vinyl. I was doing so this week, and picked out four LP`s that I wanted to add to my collection, but only after carefully inspecting their surfaces. Naturally a delicate item such as an LP undergoes `ageing`, a thirty plus year old desirable will not have escaped some surface damage. There are occasionally long and short deeper scratches, and more often clusters of light hairline scratches. If you want it you will have to put up with the result of said surface damage, so what do members consider damage enough to regretfully put the LP back on the shelf?