Real world life expectancy of a high end cartridge?

The other annoying thing is about the stylus guard that came with this cart. It was so flimsy and poorly designed that I was so scared of damaging the cart trying to put it on I never used it -- if it had been a better designed one I'd have had it on, and this would never have happened. 

For tracking stylus life I built a little click on/click off elapsed time timer using an electronics module that is good for 999 hours -- most other counters have far too short a period. You can see a picture of it in my system description -- it was a simple enough electronics project. Of course now I need to take it apart to do a reset!

@millercarbon I think there are two sorts of problems caused by dirt on the stylus. In the long term build up of baked up crud is of course a problem and a good thorough cleaning regimen is needed to prevent that. But more problematic and more annoying is the quick build up of a ball of fluff. My hypothesis is that this little ball actually interferes with the ability of the stylus to ride the groove and is often audible as a halo or buzz around the sound -- like mild mistracking.  Some stylus profiles are more prone to this than others but pre brushing each disc and a quick check/clean after each side keeps this under control. I use a tacky pad for the quick cleans and the magic eraser for deeper cleans but checking with a scope after each couple of plays allows me to get on top of issues before they arise.

That's all assuming you haven't bent your cantilever 90 degrees -- which was the point of the thread after all. Arguing about 500, 1000 or 2000 hours is besides the point if your expensive jewelry has bought it along the way!

Re bending it back -- surprisingly given it's a megabucks cart it's a simple Aluminum cantilever so could be bent back -- but not sure how that would affect my trade value! And "audiophile nervosa" and all that 😖