Are 500 hours too many for a used hi-end cartridge?

Under ideal conditions, top quality cartridges can exceed 2,000 hours of playing life.  But, you have no way of knowing if records played were pristine and impeccably cleaned, that alignment and setup were optimal, etc.  

I would guess that a big consideration is whether you would settle for the cartridge being re-tipped by someone like SoundSmith, which does it for much less than the manufacturer replacing the stylus.  

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.