The Lifespan of an LP?


How many times can one play a new vinyl lp before the sound noticeably degrades? For the purpose of the exercise, assume one takes decent care of the record and has a properly set up and maintained, good quality deck and stylus. My system has been taking quantum leaps in quality over the last three years and I find myself buying more mint and near-mint vintage  records on Discogs and audiophile remastered records from MoFi etc. Thanks!
heilbron
I doubt someone has played an LP to it's death to find out,  but playing a record with a nice setup will outlast you.

There are members here who have purchased an album 40-50... 60 years ago and it plays fine now.




Not sure but i have lp's from early 70's played them in all of my cartridge arm tt changes and still sound great. 

G
When you have a lot of albums it is never a problem. We get bored playing the same record over and over. Say you average listening to two records a day. That is just over 700 records a year. Many of us have 5,000 plus records. A record might get played once every six years. Records that you really like might get played a total of 10 times. With a good system and the best care a record will last indefinitely. The problem is most people do not take the best care of records. I personally do not buy used records. If I was at an estate sale I would consider buying a single large collection. The bigger the collection the less the records were played. Then you sell off the records you don't like.
Under the best conditions a record can probably be played 50 times or more. Time is not the issue. It is the number of plays. Also remember old records were played with either spherical or elliptical styli. Our modern fine line styli produce less record wear. 
I bought my first album in 1967 and like many albums I own from the 60s, 70s and 80s, played the hell out of it. I always took good care of my vinyl. But the grooves on my favorite albums (many of which have been played over 100 times) appear noticeably worn.
Up until the 1990s, I used the likes of a Shure V15Type lll with elliptical stylus at 1 gram in a modest system. Starting in around the year 1995, I started to get into high end audio with much more expensive and revealing gear. I switched to cartridges like the Dynavector XV1-s and the Atlas line. To this day, all of my albums sound as good as new and almost always sound better than reissues off of the master tape. Is it because a line contact stylus hits a different point in the groove and only the top of the groove is actually compromised? Is the top of the groove compromised merely because it looks worn? I don’t know--but in any event, all of my records sound great today and will sound great long after I’m gone.