What is the average lifespan of a phono 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

Yeah...not for me, anyway. And if some vintage MMs sound as good as you say they do, it makes even less sense. But then the problem is that there are not enough of them for everyone. Some will think that $5-$15 for an hour of listening is still acceptable expense. A little crazy especially if you play turntable a lot but better than buying $1500 pants, I guess. Opinions vary, though.

I have a Rega Planar 3 from 1982 with a Grace 747 arm.  I've been using a Supex 900E+ moving coil as the cartridge for my really musical LP's.  I still use it today (39 years later) and it still is my favorite.  It has the original stylus with around 1500 hours, maybe.  Of course, I have a few Grado's and an Adcom CrossCoil line trace for every day listening. .  The Adcom is 37 years old and still sounds good even though it is not a good choice for my arm.