Swift Holiday Mark II? (1 Viewer)

I wouldn't have an interest in that style auction. There are a couple in the states w/that design. Decide your maximum amount for reserve if you can't hang around to the end on the bay.

I'm not going to get into a bidding war every 2-15 minutes @ the end as someone decides they can up the ante by a buck. I see a lot of interesting ploys. Just moments ago I bid on some glass. W/five minutes left someone bid enough to have the high bid. A few minutes go by & I notice the bids have increased, yet not the price. It's the same bidder. He did it again upping his bid and the last three bids, right before the end, were all his.

I suppose he thought he might have been scaring potential buyers off. I out bid him by 20 dollars or so, but still lost and that's OK. I decided what the approximate value was to me from the information available & I throw it out there w/no time left for additional bidding by me anyway.

Besides I had another auction coming up & I really wanted the Ross, so I had a few extra pounds to throw around.

That works for me, but it's big world & to each their own.
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BTW, the Holiday Mark II 704 came in today & what an easy on the eyes glass w/flat field @ 600' FOV. Very nice & I highly recommend the view. The price for the old glass was icing on the cake.

Well, if it looks like a good item (a 60's Mark II, say) I like to snipe. Intermediate bidding just jacks the price up, while the three or four guys who are appropriately covetous bid only in the last minute anyway. I prefer to bid in the last ten seconds: what I can afford, no time for a second bid. It's more like a dice game at that point. I don't mind.

If I'm not going to be on line at the close, I just assume one of you guys will be.

Frank, do your Holiday Mark II and Sport King have roughly the same field of view as you actually look through them? When I tried my Holidays against the fence the other day I came up with about an 8.2 to 8.5 degree FOV. Of course, I don't have an instrument to measure this exactly and probably lose something to low eye relief. But this is way under the advertised. Here are the stats for my Mark II's:
Commodore (376' claimed; 7.1°) 339'; 6.5°
Audubon (420' claimed; 8°) 428'; 8.2°
Holiday1 (578' claimed; 11°) 446'; 8.5°
Holiday2 (578' claimed; 11°) 428'; 8.2°
Neptune (425' claimed; 8°) 410'; 7.8°
Sea Hawk (460' claimed; 8.8°) 473'; 9°

1Pre-1960
21967

I don't have an Ascot 8x40, but it advertises 393 feet: so does their 8x30 Grand Prix of this era, but the latter delivers only 303 feet for 5.8 degrees. Since the Mark II's presumably have better eyepieces, maybe the Ascot delivers 7.5--does any body know? Simon? Elkcub?

My Sport Kings are boxed up so i can't check them right now.

I would have to check. It is difficult for me to determine for a few reasons. For one I can't see the full field of view in the Holiday though I can see it in the Sport King. This is the result of the eyecup design on both models. Second, I think my Sport King has notably more field curvature though it does also appear to have a larger apparent sweet spot.

Will let you know.

I have just bought the Swift Panoramic Mark II model which I understand is the same as the Holiday MkII?
I will let you know my opinion when it arrives.

The Panoramic MkII arrived this and it is indeed one of the better Swifts in my collection. Very bright and a big sweet spot, the optics are in new condition.
When I first looked through them the image was very distorted in the left side, the result of a bodge service, the left eyelens was inserted the wrong was around.
Another problem is a cracked bridge at the spindle, resulting in the focus arm snagging the ocular guides.