Cartridges: Complete Scam?

My approach is simple. I upgrade the cartridge last. For as long as I hear improvements while upgrading other elements of the chain I will not touch it. So, trust your hearing, be nice to your wallet and stay cool. When the time to upgrade comes, I will have a small problem because you can't buy them try them and return. Either I will do it with a few used ones or take my best guess with either new or used. Ideally I would want to upgrade arm, cartridge and phono at the same time, at least arm and cartridge. But if you have a Continuum with SAT tonearm and Ypsilon phono stage you better try just about anything regardless of price. A lot of work, but fun too. Poverty is not a sin but it sucks.

I have found that you can get good sound on the cheap, which is a good thing. I have also found that you can get great sound by spending more. However, I have found that not all good is cheap and not all great can be had with green. It takes work.

Benz Micro is a good example. Each step up their chain gives you potentially more. I've been able to get up to their Ruby 3 series and it is the best cartridge I've owned and worth every penny. It is not unltra expensive but it is not cheap. On the other hand their ACE low out put is amazing sounding and might be all one needs.

The ''classical economist'' (Smit, Ricardo,etc.) try to formulate             ''theory of value'' by distinction between ''value in use'' and                 ''value in exchange''. Something like ''the real value'' and ''prices''.       To illuminate the difference (the so called ''reduction of complexity'')     they used examples like water and ear. Both have incredible               ''value in use '' but no ''exchange value '' whatever. Both economist of course thought that UK represent the world. In the middle east        the next war will be about water while China is more threaten            by ear pollution then by NATO.                                                                Alas the theory of the ''real value'' was never ,uh, produced so           the only alternative still is ''theory of prices'' expressed in money         terms while there is no sensible theory of money at all.                      Nobody knows what the ''price'' of dollar or euro will be next
year.
 In this thread   everyone has his own theory of value   with the
same distinction but according to his own interpretation of the             ''real value'' or ''value in use''.

    

I would have to agree with others on this post was started by a rookie. The post started off strange and got worse by claiming that by using Magico speakers with a crappy amp the system would sound great just because of the speakers. Far from it!
This poster needs to understand that 1 piece of the puzzle doesn't make the whole puzzle. You can't buy a $500 amp and use a pair of $50k Magico's and think the sound will be any good.
It's called synergy! You can't throw darts at pieces of equipment and think they will sound sound as a whole. For example, you want to buy this $2k cartridge, does your phono preamp have the adjustability to make the cartridge perform? Does it have the appropriate gain needed? Do you need a head amp? 
Using your TT, IMO, you probably won't get better sound with a $5k cartridge. A better cartridge will need a much better tonearm, and a better tonearm will need a better TT. I moved up from the VPI JMW 9 tonearm to the $3k VPI 10.5 3D arm, which improved the SQ by quite a bit, and this was on my Hanns T-60 TT.
There are big differences between cartridges: MC/MM/MI, vintage vs. new, etc...  I remember using an Ortofon MC-20 back in 1978 which was a good cartridge back then. I bought a new MC-20 anniversary model 8 years, using a much better system than in 1978, and the MC-20 sounded pretty bad compared to the newer model cartridges. I sold it off pretty fast. 
There are diminishing returns in everything you buy in many different areas. But IMO, you have to get higher up in the audio equipment food chain before you can claim diminishing returns.