1. Obviously not. People are just giving a figure which is high enough to be vaguely believable and low enough not to be putting buyers off.
2. Playing time is certainly more important in my experience. I’ve bought a good number of old cartridges in my time and have never encountered anty age related problems. YMMV.
3. Years ago I bought an Ortofon Rohmann with an estimated 700+ hours play time, the only such value I’ve ever actually believed. It sounded wonderful and I used it for a further three years or so (though not exclusively) before making use of the trade-in option because I found the sound quality had degraded somewhat. I can’t really say how many hours it had then, but certainly well over a thousand given that the original estimate was roughly correct.
In other words I wouldn’t be at all afraid of buying a cartridge with 500+ hours on the clock, given the price is right.
2. Playing time is certainly more important in my experience. I’ve bought a good number of old cartridges in my time and have never encountered anty age related problems. YMMV.
3. Years ago I bought an Ortofon Rohmann with an estimated 700+ hours play time, the only such value I’ve ever actually believed. It sounded wonderful and I used it for a further three years or so (though not exclusively) before making use of the trade-in option because I found the sound quality had degraded somewhat. I can’t really say how many hours it had then, but certainly well over a thousand given that the original estimate was roughly correct.
In other words I wouldn’t be at all afraid of buying a cartridge with 500+ hours on the clock, given the price is right.