I had a bunch of audiophile friends over and we were spinning some vinyl. Someone noticed that the arm looked a little funny. I took a close look and the stylus of my Lyra Helikon was hanging on loosely to the body, still playing music! Anyway it was getting to end of its useful life (said hopefully) and that moved me to a Skala. Now on my second Skala, just wore out the first.
Here is another one, fortunately not caused by me. Maybe 20 years ago, a local dealer called me, knowing that I had expressed interest (desire?) for a high end TT.
At that time I had a SOTA Star with a vacuum and an ET2 arm. What he had was a really pristine Versa Dynamics TT (a Model 2.0) that one of his customers had. 25 years ago it cost $8000! The customer had committed suicide. Fortunately WBF wasn't around at that time or he might have done it sooner,
The dealer was helping his widow dispose of his very high end equipment. It was a very good deal and I bought it. He said do you want a high end cartridge also, and he pulls out a box with a Van den Hul Grasshopper Gold III cartridge which had been used with the Versa. As I remember, it was $3000 back then. I had never seen a cartridge that expensive and opened the box. I didn't see any stylus. I handed the box back to the dealer and he looked around and saw the stylus stuck to the bottom of the box! Fortunately, he sent it back to the Netherlands and A J himself repaired the cartridge and a few weeks later I got it at a bargain price also.
Larry