# VG+ is a moral position > Record grading is a shared scale that everyone in the shop argues about. Printed as a card with the abbreviations down the side, it is an in-joke and a price list at once. August 17, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/record-shop-staff-shirts A column of grades from top to bottom — Mint, Near Mint, Very Good Plus, and down — each with its abbreviation on the right. At the foot, in a different hand, a price. Every one of those lines is a judgement somebody made about a piece of plastic, and somebody else disagreed. ## Why is grading the right subject? Because it's the shop's shared language and its permanent argument. Grading is how condition gets communicated between people who can't hear the record — a compressed scale from unplayed to unlistenable, applied by eye, by ear and by temperament. Two shops will grade the same sleeve differently, and both will be certain. Crates, turntables and headphone silhouettes describe *records*. A grading card describes the people who sell them. ## What makes it funny to the trade? Everybody knows where the lying happens. `VG+` is the grade that carries the most optimism per letter, and every collector has bought something described that way and disagreed on arrival. Printing the scale is a mild accusation aimed at the whole industry, including the shop wearing it. A handwritten price at the foot completes it — the joke isn't the scale, it's the scale next to a number. ## Is the scale anybody's property? The scale itself is common trade vocabulary, and the wording of a particular guide isn't. Terms like Mint, Very Good and Poor, and their abbreviations, are used across the whole second-hand trade. What belongs to somebody is a specific publication's written definitions and its name — price guides and marketplace platforms have their own published grading text and their own brands. Abbreviations and grades, drawn fresh, are the trade's language. A guide's paragraph explaining what VG+ means is that guide's writing. ## Can it name the shop? Their own, and it's a natural fit. A grading card is a shop document — it lives on the counter or inside the sleeve — so the shop name sits comfortably at the head or the foot as part of the form. It reads as stationery rather than as a logo tee, which suits a business whose customers are allergic to being marketed at. Label names, artist names and sleeve artwork all belong to other people, and this is a trade that knows exactly who owns what. ## Does it work for other second-hand trades? The grading habit is everywhere once you look. Comics have their own condition scale and a slabbing culture on top of it. Books have terms for board and jacket condition. Coins and stamps have numbered grades. Video games have a whole vocabulary about boxes and manuals. Each has the same structure — a ladder of terms, an abbreviation column, and a community that argues about it. A bookshop version reads quite differently and is [worth building around the shop's own stock](/stories/bookshop-staff-shirts). ## Is this staff apparel or stock? It sells, which is the useful part. Record shop customers buy shirts from record shops — that's already a habit — but they mostly buy the shop's logo. A grading card is something they'd wear to a fair, where every other person there also knows what `NM` means and will make eye contact about it. For staff it does the job team apparel is meant to do: [readable as a set without being a uniform](/stories/small-business-staff-shirts). ## Does it print well? Yes — it's a typographic list, which is about as durable as artwork gets. A column of terms with dot leaders and abbreviations gives strong horizontal rhythm and reads from across a shop. The handwritten price supplies the one loose element. Nothing here is fine enough to be at risk. Washed black, charcoal and deep brown all suit it. Two inks, with the abbreviations or the price carrying an accent colour. ## How do I get one made? Describe the card at [JustOG](/) — which grades, which abbreviations, and what the price at the bottom says. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). It's Very Good Plus. It's always Very Good Plus.