Turntable issue

Audiojan, is this a used truntable.? The bearing usually has a ball it rotates on. If the ball fell out the platter will drag.

Make sure the bearing is perfectly vertical in the plinth.  If it has become loose or somehow angled there could be a small tilt allowing the edge of the turntable to touch.  This would be seen as the touching always in the same spot on the plinth.  If the platter is damaged in  its bearing attachment the contact could rotate around the plinth with the same spot of the platter being low and in contact or dragging.  

Was this thing shipped in all original factory packaging? Because this is exactly the kind of damage I would expect if someone put the table in a box with the platter still in place in the table. Which is the very last thing anyone should ever do. But hard to think of any other way this happened.

Platter is massive, shipping damaged the bearing and/or plinth, now you have a real problem. Or a return. Because there’s just about no other way a perfectly operating turntable went into a box and came out like this. You take em apart, box each piece individually, put it back together. If there was damage you would notice it immediately while putting it together. You don’t mention anything like that. So I’m thinking it was packaged wrong. So how was it shipped? And how do the bearing, platter, and plinth look?

@millercarbon, it was shipped in the original box with all the original packing material. Platter was taken off. There was no visible damage to the box or compression of the packing material, it all looked reasonably good (in other words, as expected when USPS has handled the box across the country).

I've checked the ceramic ball and that is indeed still on the spindle. Next, I will check the angularity of the spindle to make sure it's perfectly vertical.

The platter does "sink" all the way down when you put it on the spindle, but not the entire bottom side is dragging, so maybe the magnets are doing what they are supposed to and this is unrelated to that.

I'll continue to investigate. I appreciate all the suggestions so far and please keep them coming. This should be a solvable problem.

My suggestion which I'm guessing you've already done is to check your horizontal levels.Is the platter perfectly level?