Low Hours Phono Cartridges?

So it appears that many of you buy & sell cartridges to hear them. This means that buying & selling components here has basically replaced auditioning at the local dealer.

Has anyone ever had a shop set up a specific cartridge in a table for you to audition? Not one shop ever did that for me(I've been buying audio since 1969....AR table). And I've asked!

I managed an audio shop in LA in the 80's. I regularly set up tables & cartridges for auditions, but was never asked for a specific combination. However, I often mounted various cartridges just to hear them myself.

One interesting thing I found was that various examples of the same cartridge can sound completely different. I auditioned 3 Audioquest 404's, & they all were unique. One sounded particularly better than the others, so I bought it!

I wonder if some of these high end cartridges that you audition are lemons, & so they get passed around until they find an owner who is happy with it!

As far as feedback, I have fb from just 2 purchases here. The last 4 sellers didn't post fb. However, I have over 10000 fb on ebay, where I make my living selling musical equipment. So I look new here, but I have 9 years of selling experience on the internet! Am I trustworthy??

Regarding measuring hours on a cartridge, I learned a trick here on Audiogon some years back: I have "click" counters for each of my (currently) four cartriges. After each side of a record, I religiously click the counter. If I ever decide to sell a cartrdige, I can honestly state how many sides the cartridge has played, and leave it to the purchaser to do the math.

Most audiophile listeners like me have more than one system. There were times I owned more than a dozen of absolute top systems like Koetsu, Benz, Lyra, Transfiguration, Zyx, Clearaudio,...
I've not much time to enjoy music so most cartridges have less than 50hrs after 2 years. Seems to be incredible but think there are many people acting in same way. So it's not always a swindle if systems with low hrs are offered.

Bye,
Marco

The answer is simple.

Many sellers are DEALERS.

Most sellers are ordinary guys/girls who are true and honest audiophiles like me. They often have multiple cartridges, sell their old and buy new. I have bought a dozen vintage and a couple of NOS carts from A´gon and eBay and all have been OK, and I have sold maybe ten used and one NOS to fund my next cart/audio purchase. Therefore actual playing hours are usually low because the cartridges are in circulation. It´s just fun to buy "low hours" carts for low prices. And actually most of my best used purchases are the best I may ever have: vintage MM, MF and MC. My maximum is 300 hours, if it fits my system and I like it I keep it.
I have had bookkeeping for all the LPs I have played and know exactly how many hours my cartridge really has... since my first real high quality cartridge more than thirty years ago.
Audio life is simple : ) Enjoy your darlings