This is a pet peeve of mine, releases that happen only on vinyl (and, with a moment of perversity, cassette). Yes, let's use a medium that degrades with each use.

I have resorted to, for those situations where I cannot plead the masters out of the sound engineers, buying the still sealed, unplayed record where available so that it can be converted to digital while it is still pristine.

I play my records like crazy, some are new heavy vinyl, but most is crappy 70s and 80s vinyl. And I have never noticed the supposed drop in quality the usage is supposed to inflict on them. I think the stories might be overblown.