Experiences buying used cartridges

It's a good experience, you can not buy top cartridges from the 80s in NEW condition anyway. Used cartridge in very good condition can be a good find. Some of them still sounds amazing even compared to new, but for a lot better price (used normally cheaper). Anyway it's better to have NEW stuff as well to test them nose to nose with top vintage stuff. I'm totally find buyin used if they are reasonably priced (especially MM/MI/MF). It's a part of the hobby after all.

I would recommend to buy used cartridges from ebay to get buyers protection for those who’re not sure about the seller reputation. The price may be 15% higher than in the private agon listings, but at least there is no chance you will be ripped-off.

Why not ask the seller about suspension condition or to ask for additional pictures of everything if there is no clear statement in the listing? I would avoid the oldschool sellers who can’t even take a good pictures of the cartridge, cantilever, stylus tip.

But there is no reason to avoid used cartridges!

As Halcro said:

I’ve had many more disappointments with ’new’’ cartridges and it would take some serious word-of-mouth for me to outlay again for a ’new’ current model.

Exactly, that’s why buying vintage cartridges (NOS or Used) is great experience compared to overpriced new high-end models. Most of us buyin and selling cartridges, i do that just to try something different searching for "my sound". I hardly imagine someone trying to full people on ebay, bacause it’s a nightmare for the seller if the buyer is not happy about purchase. Pretty easy.

When people talking about SoundSmith retiping service It sounds like his cartridges/cantilevers are "the best in the wolrd" and if you retip your original cartridge you will get a better one, but it is not true. This statement is very strange and shows only disrecpect to the original manufacturers, who developed so many unique cartridges over the years. It might works for your Denon, but it is not always works for truly High-End cartridges. It make sence to retip cheap cartridge with the most advanced cantilever and stylus tip, but you can’t rebuild, retip or recantilever ZYX (for example) expecting to get a better cartridge, you are foolling yourself! You will get a very strange hybrid cartridge that no longer ZYX, same with so many other top class cartridges. Otherwise SoundSmith own carts would be better than anything else on the market, but they are not! In so many cases you don’t need Ruby cantilever on certain cartridges, also take it count the stylus moving mass compared to the original. Some cartridges sounds much better than Ruby or Sapphire just with the aluminum or beryllium cantilevers (beryllium is restricted long time ago). For the price of SS retip anyone can buy a used, fully original cartridge in perfect working condition. Also if you will look how the top class cartridge manufacturers (like Technics for example) placed and fixed nude diamonds throught the boron hollowed pipe cantilevers you will realize that NO ONE can do that today the same way at any price. Modern retippers can only glue the stylus tip to the cantilever which is way different method.

@vegasears untill you will find a used vintage cartridge that outperform your new $5000 cartridge for 1/10 of the price. Or do you believe NEW is always better performer? Sadly new products from the legendary cartridge designers like Takeda San is no longer available and it's impossible to find NOS. Ignoring vintage (used) cartridges you miss a lot, not to mention the fact that if you believe in burn-in theory your new cartridge is not performing well in the first 200 hours (what a waste of time).  

@vegasears 

Buying a used phono cartridge for me would be like buying a used Tooth Brush!

Do you feel the same about used records? 

@harold-not-the-barrel

I bought 3 HQ MM carts from V. Simakov of grgaudio, very happy with all.

Bought two as well, no problem with communication, used to talk over the phone a few times, my cartridge is still OK after 4 years, but the one i bought for a friend turned to be deffected pretty soon (Sony XL55). My friend shipped it to SoundSmith and they said the stylus is worn out and the coil is dead and must be fully repaired, the cost of the service alone is about $450-500. As always (confirmed by many agon buyers) Victor’s statement was like "200-300 hrs of use" in the listing which is not true. A bit tricky seller when the listying is not on ebay.