What is the average lifespan of a phono cartridge?

What's the best one can hope for, any stylus ? 3000 hours or so ?

I don’t know any audiophile who will stick to one cartridge forever, normally people sell cartridges before the stylus is worn out, but when we’re buyin used cartridges it’s nice to buy those with long life to insure ourself, it’s also nice to buy from a collectors who has many carts in rotation (then most of them have low hrs of use).

I can’t imagine myself using one cartridge for 2000 hrs, so i don't care. 
But i don't want to buy a used cartridge designed only for 300-500 hrs, especially the vintage MC which can not be retipped by the original manufacturer. The opportunity to find NOS stylus for MM is more optimistic. 

Dear @inna : If you want first rate quality level performances on what you are listening and want to preserve in mint condition your LP's then the ideal number is 1K hours and no more than 1.5K hours.

Could be interesting that a cartridge designer as @jcarr could chime about maybe not only me but almost all are wrong on the subject.

R.

Well, not my case, but some cartridges are extremely expensive, and I am quite sure that many audiophiles having them will want them to last for a very long time. You normally don’t throw away a perfectly good $5k or more cartridge.

You normally don’t throw away a perfectly good $5k or more cartridge.

This is a typical MC dilemma

... and $5k is low budget MC as we can see nowadays, why not a $15k cartridge just for 1000 hrs as Raul said ? LOL

Official trade-in (instead of re-tip) is just about 60-80% of the new cartridge, good business :)

This is what we call premium segment