How much will you pay for an exotic cartridge....

I disagree that the dealer has been ruined. Not if you know how to relate to them. If you become a good customer many of them will give you much better pricing than you get on line and you can be assured that you are getting the real deal. The best dealers interact with one another so your dealer can get pretty much anything by swapping equipment with the dealer that has what you want. 
Most music lovers are not audiophiles. They want someone to come in and set up a system for them and teach them how to use it and service it when necessary. You can not get that kind of service on line. 

Oh, the answer is as little as possible.

I have a great relationship with many dealers, that is precicesly why I don't want to waste their time on what would inevitably be a fools errand.  
Fact:  US MSRP is $8995
Fact: EU MSRP is $6995

This i s a music forum in the end so I'll put it simply and quote Kenny Rogers " You've got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away and when to run".   

I don't want to waste peoples time chasing after what, at best, will be their potential to match a price I can simply press a button and buy online from an authorized dealer in the EU.  I wont owe anyone anything for the amazing deal they get me. 

Cartridges are a tough thing to test and buy, hard to demo and short of an install it's hard for a dealer to show value.   I did have a dealer who happened to deal in my turntable once allow me to bring in my turntable and compare it to his with the cartridge I wanted to buy already mounted.   Total dealer effort?  Make room for me to place my TT on his rack.   

Dealers serve a purpose as I've said previously and I wouldn't have been through a few pairs of speakers without them over the last couple of years.  They have helped enormously to trouble shoot and earned high margins on those sales.   I'm simply saying that selling Lyra's to savvy buyers makes the dealer value prop very difficult.   If I was a dealer, I wouldn't be happy with what AQ are doing to Lyra from a price perspective only.   Being a consumer, I'm hopeful my dealer beats the EU pricing but it's not going to be an easy conversation for me to have as a consumer who does value my relationship with my dealer.  Just not to the point of handing over an extra couple thousand dollars.

@bbyer Another excellent post! One that i totally agree with. The dealers that i have had long time relations all are willing to talk price, but I wouldn’t bother them either with the scenario that you brought up. Maybe a lot of these folks are losing a lot of $$ due to the pricing differential that is evident on cartridges from country to country. I do know of one a’phile who buys and sells cartridges on a frequent basis, none of which retail for anything less than multi thousands of $$ here in the US. He is absolutely doing two things, one is buying off-shore...and two, is not paying anything like what the US dealers are expecting...

@dover   Very interesting post. The Air Tight PC1 you mention is a good example of this pricing strategy. Now maybe this cartridge was so under priced at its inception and that the market demand was so huge after the review, that this lead to a change in the pricing. We have to believe that market demand drives pricing...and that the price now asked is apparently in line with said demand. OTOH, IF folks were unwilling to pay the current asked price, and the only price that sufficient demand for the PC-1 was at $2000...then I question whether this cartridge would be selling at its current price. Or, maybe the demand is so low, that the distributor feels that they need to absolutely make a killing on each unit sold in order for it to be practical. Either way, presumably the distributor knows what they are doing---or not??