Everyone's favorite topic. I digress.
My 65mm Celestron Regal ED scope is now 10yr of age. It has provided yeoman duty and have been most pleased with it. Still performs as new. But just ran across the Kowa TSN-663 Prominar ED scope on sale with a 30-day money back at Eagle Optics, so ordered one to compare to the Celestron. Will be most interesting to do so side-by-side considering the list price for the Kowa is 4x that of the Celestron. The Kowa is from their top tier Prominar line. Same for the Celestron, but the Kowa is Japanese and the Celestron was/is of Chinese manufacture. We had a very difficult spotting day a couple of weeks ago and I had to admit that the Kowa TSN-883 Prominar ED being used by one of the competitors was better at picking up the light and changing mirage better than my Celestron (something that could not be said of the ubiquitous run-of-the-mill Kowa TSN-821, which no better than the Celestron). Generally speaking, smaller scopes have sharper images than larger scopes (easier to make the smaller lens), so am hoping that the TSN-663 will do as well as the TSN-883. Should know in a couple of weeks.

If you factor re-sale Kowa is the least expensive scope on the market. Used on Ebay they bring nearly as much as purchase price.

Some of the other brands sell a high end scope much better than the run of the mill model. However go to sell them they get lumped into the same pile as the cheap models same brand name.

If somebody is really looking for a inexpensive spotting scope consider I can probably sell my Unertl 63 mm x 24 power for double what it cost.

Comparing one to the other side by side is the only useful test. You are looking at the target through a bowl of soup. sometimes clear air other times thick.

Only thing I have seen side by side better  than my very old Unertl is a Kowa with the 27 X fixed eyepiece, and if buying new Kowa is the only one I would consider.

Someone else may see it another way.

Boats

Three (3) of us shot with the Kowa TSN-663 Prominar, which is the 66mm top-of-the-line Kowa and, all three of us did not think there was any difference between the TSN-663 and my Celestron Regal 65F-ED scope on a mostly sunny day and then a cloudy day with very flat lighting and difficult 'seeing' conditions as a result. We found that the Celestron was easier to focus due to it dual (fine & coarse) focus knobs. For the price difference ($479 vs. ~$1450, retail on both) there is no reason that we could "see" to spend the extra money. The newest TSN-663 is a different color. That's what you get for the $321 price increase. A different color. 

Thank you to Eagle Optics for their 30-day return policy, which they honored with no questions ask. A professional group of folks to deal with.

So let's take two scopes that are close in performance. One cost $500 and one cost $250. After five years, the cheaper one has no re-sale value, while the other is worth $250. Which is the better value?

as long as we are discussing (discursing) our scopes......
I had a Nikon 77mm ED scope which finally broke. great little scope. Nikon couldn't fix it so they sent me the new replacement for it. 85mm EDG. TOP OF THE LINE. $3995 retail. What do I use? My old Celestron 80mm made in China. clearer and handles mirage better.
anyone want to buy a scope?

SSShooter wrote on Jun 11^th, 2015 at 5:49pm:


I digress too:

I'm going to see how this one works as a 'scope...

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Aonghas