Every used record gets pulled from its sleeve, put on the counter turntable, and listened to on both sides before it gets a price tag. We are not grading the cover art. We are grading whether the needle skips, whether there is groove wear you can hear, and whether the surface noise is a light hiss or a distraction.
A sleeve in rough shape can still hold a record that plays like new, and a mint-looking sleeve can hide a disc that was played on a bad turntable for a decade. We tag the two separately, and the playing grade is the one we stand behind if you bring something back.
That is the difference between a shop that sells crates and a shop that just sells records: we want you spending an hour on your knees finding the one nobody else noticed, and we want the grade on the tag to be true when you get it home.
