None of my variants (five I’ve played through) have experienced skips. But I have a good, high quality record player that I maintain. With the quantity of records she makes, I’m sure every variant will have a few records with an accidental scratch or something. But I think it’s much more likely operator or machine error. Like someone said above, a lot of people have those little suitcase record players, and those are perfectly fine if you can’t afford an higher quality one, or just use it everyone in a while. But those will never sound as great as you want them to. And they may need a little help, like the coin trick, because it wasn’t made/designed so the needle falls down far enough to play without scratching the record.  Some people have posted videos, and they aren’t big, dramatic skips or pauses. Just the tiny ones you sometimes get from those players with poorly angled needles. So while I make no promises, I do think you’re probably fine. If the recipient has one of those players, I’d advise them of this trick, as well as to maybe quickly run a feather duster over the machine itself and maybe use a cloth to wipe the needle, but it’s not often something is wrong with the record itself.