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Newport Mkll unknown year (1 Viewer)

Musoman

Musoman

PETE - Nikon/Sony Shooter
United Kingdom
I've got these lovely Newport Mk2s, but the central axle end cap, where it seems most of the serial numbers are marked, is missing.

All i have is the stamp, which looks like B56 - and possibly someone slipped with the die and hammer cos i cant tell what the angled line indentation is just before the letter B.

Apart from that, the optics are spotless, and Coll. is pretty spot on.

I suppose some of the experts here could give me the nearest decade, if not the actual year ?

Thanks

PS they're excellent Binos too. I have a set of 8x40 Chinon Rapid Focus nasty things, and they've been retired.
The Swifts were less than £20, IIRC
 

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This is a clone of the Celestron Nova, both made by, I think, Kamakura Koki. This company made many models for Swift & Celestron (and probably others) that were identical except for externals. I got a Nova at Astronomics in autumn '86 for Halley's Comet, which turned out to be not so spectacular unless you had at least 50x. After I discovered the 10x wasn't enuf, I got a 16x70 Deluxe, also Celestron (both models were being closed out, so I got really good deals on them). Finally got a C5 w/22mm ep that gave me 56x.....but sold it after the comet disappeared. However, kept the 2 binos for over 15 years and literally wore them out. They were great.
 
I must point out that Musoman's photos show that his Newport Mk II carries the B56 mark and was therefore made by Hiyoshi Kogaku. This is the company that made all of the 804 Audubons and most of the other Porros for Swift during that period. As a "Mk II" it should have BaK-4 prisms, but I've seen a few Mk II models with BK7. In any event I don't think it's a Celestron clone.

Ed
 
I could never keep all those mom n' pop Japanese bino outfits straight (and am too lazy to go to Pete's website and actually look it up.....sorry Ed). But if you check specs, size & weight, they're virtually identical with the Novas. Later, the Ultima line from Celestron & the Ultralite for Swift also the same, save the armoring.
 
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If you hold it to the light, maybe 12-15" from the eyeballs, if you see some slight, diamond-shaped shading along the edges of the exit pupil it has the flint glass (Bk7) prisms. But yours shouldn't show this shading.
 
I tried this, and i can see some very light grey shading - looks like a square set in the round of the tiny pupil, but the square is edge on, like a diamond, though its a perfect square, not elongated like a diamond
 
I'll be darned.....'course my Nova was a mid 80's sample, so prolly by that time they'd gone to the crown glass prisms.
 
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