Customer Reviews

Old Rifle Scopes

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this is a book with a lot of pic. and enough detail of older model scopes to be worth checking out, the detail is fair and the prices listed are pretty close to todays market,(at least in my neck of the woods) This is also a pretty rare book as far as topic w/ few books writen on the subject and for the collector, worth checking out.

I was fortunate enough to read a copy of this book belonging to a friend before investing in it. The book is okay and for collectors or people who can't get enough of old scopes, and the information is interesting and very useful-a lot of research. But for a person happening upon an occasional old scope of interest, it isn't worth the asking price of todays market. I suppose if it were such a great book, it wouldn't have gone out of print as enough people would have been buying it to keep it around, but sadly there isn't a lot of other subject related information out there, so if you live and love old scopes, buy-up.

I finally bought a copy of this book because I deal almost exclusively in vintage optics and mounts. Yes, rifle optics have come a long way since before 1900. So why buy this book, with the myriad of modern, high quality scope manufacturers out there? Well, for those that appreciate buying old rifles that would like to have optics from the same period as the rifle, this is an invaluable book. The value for a used rifle scope is MUCH more difficult to determine than the value of a used rifle, and I think this book was well researched. A scope, unlike the rifle itself, can be subjected to a lot of hard punishment, not only from rifle recoil, but from field handling and temperature extremes. Some of the older brands of scopes tended to fare better than other brands, which would add to their value and perhaps demand. The commentary on these various brands of scopes is well structured, the chapters logically arranged. This is absolutely the top book in my scope book collection, simply because it contains as much valuable information on vintage scopes as many gun catalogs did over the span of 100 years. I'm not sure why this book went out of print, because there is one heck of a demand for it today (a ridiculously artificial demand). Old Rifle Scopes is simply but aptly titled. To some, this book may be mediocre, but tell that to the buyers that still pay upwards of $150 for it.