Was your first cartridge relatively expensive?

"I was told by my dealer and others that the list of importance goes. 1.cartridge 2.phono stage 3.arm 4.table"

I would list priorities very differently than your dealer:
1) Table 2) arm 3) cartridge 4) phono stage.

Your table and arm determine how well your cartridge can do its job - how much music it can get from the grove. And the phono stage can never give you more music by itself, only relay (and not mess up) what it gets from the table/arm/cartridge.

Howie, I strongly agree with Raul about getting a dealer to mount the cartridge and set up your table. Kids (and newbies), don't try this it home. Sure you can get your table to make sound, but you want it to sound its best. It really takes considerable experience to do this properly. Many here have that experience, probably many more of us think we do but in reality don’t .

Thanks for the comments guys, I hope this thread will help other newbies as well.

I do not plan to buy locally as I do not like the dealer that sell the vinyl products I'm interested in. He'll rip me off enough to buy quite a few cartridges to play around with.

I do plan to spending time learning about things. I'm an avid reader of message boards. :D
It's a bit disheartening to know that a cartridge needs to be replaced about 1500 hours or so. Especially considering the fact that it takes about couple hundred hours of breakin.

So most of you didn't break your first cartridge or damage it because of your newbiness?

My experience with cartridges is very different. I find that I typically use a cartridge for 4 or more years before replacing, and that's listening almost every day. So, that's 3,500 - 4,500 hours for me. I've been doing this for 30 years, and my experience has been pretty consistent over that time. My current cartridge probably has 2,000 hours on it and I can't tell any degradation so far.

Yes! but so was my foray into analog, I bought an inexpensive setup with a cartridge already installed the MMF-5 from Music Hall. I find it to be quite satisfying, for my needs. I also bought an inexpensive but fabulous sounding phono stage. A Redgum from Australia with surprisingly good results. (One of our Audiogon dealers Quest for Sound carries them) But if your really going to make a serious investment of money and time and all the other commitments that serious analog carries, I would listen to Rushton. I have heard his setup several times and can attest that it is undoubtedly amongst the finest you can get. He knows from what he speaks.