Cartridge without serial?

If a cartridge sold with fake serial number (or without serial number) then you can only guess if this cart passed quality control or not, the history of this cart is unknown. What is easy to do is to make it looks like sealed and never opened before in the box. On my sample the field for serial number in the manual was blank (it was a grey market sample from juki), but my next sample from Mehran (official US importer) was with serial number also printed in the manual and on cartridge body. 

chakster...
Based on your comment I got my ZYX manual out.
At the bottom of page 10 there IS a serial number BUT it`s been scribbled over with a pen, but I can still see the numbers nonetheless.
I would look at the box to see if there`s a number on it too but that`s been in NJ for awhile now :( 

Just checked the manual from my ZYX Premium 4D from Mehran (SoraSound) and there is a serial number field on warranty page with black ink stamp “PD108” and another layer in red “Premium 4D” stamp.

I have another ZYX product (headamp) with same black ink stamp “P1172”, also from SoraSound.


Even my Zyx Live18 headshell comes with serial number (also black ink stamp “S1994” in the manual)

@chakster  Are you suggesting that the manufacturer of a cartridge, who probably is not producing large numbers, will not know if some go missing? Or, that he has no way of knowing which distributor is going through a much larger supply than the others....Plus, is the manufacturer not marking the serial number on each cartridge before supplying to his/her distributor?You think that cartridges are leaving the factory with no serial number attached without their knowledge... I'm having a hard time buying all this....just saying.

We're talking about thousands of cartridges, because the importers are in regions like Asia, Europe, North America covering huge territory with huge population of people and there are many audiophiles and high-end shops. Do you think Nakatsuka-San making 100 cartridges and for the whole Asia they have only 25 cartridges in stock? 

You can't be an importer if you can't sell a lot, you can't buy just like a small shop or private seller, you must buy many cartridges to sell in your country (or several countries).  

For example:

Even if you're buying 100 cartridges and then sell 50 privately to your grey market dealer in Hong Kong who list them for sale on ebay (for the price lower than suggested retail price anywhere in the world) to sell worldwide then you're a cheater, but your samples cannot be identified if you (as a dishonest importer) or your grey market partner decided to remove all serial numbers (or replaced them with fake serial numbers). 

Grey market dealer is a rat in the chain who sell worldwide for very low price, but official dealer can't sell worldwide, because he's a dealer ONLY in one region. They can't sell it lower than suggested retail price, they can't sell it lower than the price they paid, because importer sell to dealers expecting retail price policy from the dealers. 

Grey market dealers ruin the whole system of distribution.