180g new vs. NM used

It depends. 

The Steve Hoffman forums are a good resource, for the most part. 

You can also look up the pressing on Discogs and see what kind of rating a particular pressing has and if there are any comments about it.  This can be less helpful, as you don't know what it is exactly they are "rating" - the sound quality of the pressing, whether they like the album itself, or something else. 

It's also not uncommon to see a mixture of feedback on the quality in comments/reviews with one person thinking it's the best ever and others complaining about surface noise or other issues.  

NM used original from good dealer if possible. New vinyl is likely noisy. Older records might have the odd pop but I find a lot of new vinyl is just continuously noisy.

A Charity thrift store I've stopped at for years, I'd find Classical for 25 cents ea. even Box-Sets. Now they've wised-up and charge 50 cents and charge for each disc in Sets. Originals are easily found of records we desired in our more youthful days. Great bargains compared to when we'd have to pay new prices which we couldn't afford.

Happy Easter 🐥 🐇

Thanks everyone for the insights.  I'm trying to figure out how to get to the details on discogs like "best pressing" of a certain record (think LZ II RL pressing, if such anomalies exist for other records) and can't seem to figure out what everyone is looking at.  Is it "user reviews" of the record?