Rethinking the past 2 weeks and looking at used prices of some of the more popular MC,s on Ebay, a Madrigal Carnegie sold for about 350$, Monster cable Gemesis 1000 MC for 315$ and the one I was interested in (Lyra Clavis) sold for 924$! ( Sold for 1695$ in Jan 1992) Gadzooks! And these were used examples with the typical phrases of ..about 300 hours...use. Really? Just who measures their MC,s time allotment anyway??
So moral of story, your better off having an old one brought up to spec with a Boron or hollow sapphire cantilever, van De.,hyper Elyptical, line contact, etc. For the same price as these old examples as long as they know what their doing.