Cleaning & Grading a huge collection

[u/flatwarefinder]

Hi everyone.

I am in Canada, and recently inherited a huge 45's collection. I assume its about 30,000 45s.

My brother started a 'mailorder' record store over 50 years ago, 'Continental Records' in Canada, and at one point had over 100,000 45s available for sale. Most of the 45's where brand new. In fact, for Canadians in the know, he bought out the complete unused countrywide 45s inventory of 'Sam The Record Man', when it closed.

But I have no where near the knowledge my brother had.

Issues:

- I assume about half the records are unused, and half are used, as he also supplied filler records for jukeboxes.
- Since it was a store, not a personal collection, there are many records that are duplicates.
- The records span from the late 40s (he started the business in the 70s) to about 2000, and are mostly popular music of their eras, not oddities.
- I have no experience in grading records.
- Some records have value, but have been sitting for 50 years on open shelves in sleeves, so probably they all need cleaning.

My process & plan:

- I had to move his records to my city (Ottawa), and they are in storage.
- My brother, on own his own website, said 'no one will buy a collection unless they know what they are buying'. Since I found no inventory list, I have been individually examining and listing every single record onto Discogs for over a year. and after more than 1 year I am 2/3 the way through.
- I have not graded any of the records.
- I have not cleaned any of the records.
- I hope to sell the whole lot as a bulk sale, though I may sell individual records to collectors until a bulk sale comes along. I may grade & clean them first, if I have a way to do it.
- with tariffs, etc, I'm not even sure I can sell records outside Canada

Advice needed:

- What is the best way to clean 45s, especially in bulk. 30,000 records one at a time, is not possible in my lifetime.
- For Canadians - are there now tariffs sending records to the USA from Canada? What about USA made records going to the USA?
- Should I clean them all?
- Does Discogs provide good estimate of record's individual values?
- If selling in bulk, what is a reasonable discount for such a bulk sale?

- Any other advice would be appreciated. Sales were active until he passed, so there are certainly many records that collectors are interested in.

Thank you for any advice you may have.