What scope is this? (1 Viewer)

Hi guys 'n gals, I'm hoping you can help me out by identifying this spotting scope! I love/hate mystery buys, but couldn't pull the trigger on this one just yet. My phone camera, my description, and the condition of the scope aren't going to make it easy (they're all crap - Sorry!).

It was at my local swap meet today being sold by one of my favorite "random junk" vendors. I know Leupolds can have cosmetic gold rings near the objective, as does this scope, but the build quality and image quality did not seem to agree with that brand name.

The finish is sticky and black (it reminds me of some older and/or worn Sigma/Quantaray camera lenses that I've handled). There were no markings anywhere on the scope aside from the zoom range (the sticker for which was misaligned but I think it read 20x-60x [I know the maximum was 60x for sure; couldn't read the other side]).

The objective was probably 50mm or so. The optics were clean and clear with dark blue coatings that reminded me of some Russian optics I've seen before. The tripod mount looked kinda nice. The eyecup is collapsible (seen collapsed here) and there's a thread (presumably for adapters or caps) at the base of the eyepiece. The scope also has a little peep sight built in (as seen on the top of the scope in the image provided). The overall length was maybe 13 or 14 inches.

Zooming (controlled by the grip near the ocular) and focusing worked smoothly, but as I said before, it wasn't very nice to look through aside from some very generous eye relief. At maximum zoom the image was dark and mushy. When I could get a clean image, contrast was good, but there was a significant amount of color fringing (green/blue/purple).

Any ideas as to what it could be? Is it worth salvaging/repairing (I've worked on camera lenses in the past)? Thanks for any information/speculation you can provide. Yes I did try a reverse Google Images search... It didn't go well.

Hi,

large amount of color in a pretty slow instrument (for a spotting scope - 50mm aperture and 13.5" = f7 or so) makes this probably an achromatic doublet design without special glass. These are usually not sharp over 40x or so, which explains the failure at 60x.

Such an instrument could be nice with a fixed 30x wideangle EP but since this one doesn't look to have the option to change the EP (plus getting a fitting fixed EP for an unknown scope is kinda tricky), that's out too.

Dark blue coatings probably means single coated.

I wouldn't spend real money on this... if you can get it for little money and know how to get a 20-30x wide angle EP behind this, it might be fun.

Joachim

Thanks for the reply.

Thanks for your reply, jring.

I still haven't been able to find any substantial evidence as to what company made the scope. I did manage to find a Celestron 20x60 ED that has a similar-looking front section:

http://item.ebay.com/232035013879

That particular scope was sold in the mid 90's for $200 USD. The one I saw at the swap meet could've been a zoom version of that scope (and I could've underestimated the size of the objective), but I can't confirm that as the 1995 catalogs I could dredge up on Google Books showed no such scope (but did show the 20x60 ED that I'm referring to).

I think it's time for me to give up on this one - I've spent way too much time trying to find out what it is already. Time to forget about this scope!