I just thought it a good job of restoration, and a great price for a classic Meade 12.5" on that heavy-duty equatorial. The details of the auction are secondary; YMMV. Think of the verbiage as just salesmanship. I've got a killer 12.5" F/5 mirror made some years ago, not part of a batch but as a "masterpiece". It will get mounted one day when all my other projects are done, LOL. I've got the heavy-duty Astrola mount that I've been trying to restore for years, Kim. The biggest flaw with the old Astrolas was the tiny RA drive gear diameter. And to retrofit a larger gear would mean it's no longer faithfully restored, but modified. This would make it less valuable to a collector, but more valuable to a practical astronomer, so price-wise is probably a wash. I'm just going to build the way I want to, and let my daughter deal with it after I'm dead. She'll have it on eBay before my body is cold! On 7/20/10, Kim <kimharch@cut.net> wrote:
I have a 12.5-inch F5 Cave that I've been promising myself to restore for some time. Now I have something to aspire to. Nevertheless, this scope reminds me of the old joke about the axe that George Washington used to cut down the famous cherry tree. Some museum claims to have the original axe; however, the axe head has been replaced a couple of times and the handle has been broken and replaced numerous times.
I'd never heard of the Telescope Blue Book before. I went to the website and found - nothing. Take a look: http://www.telescopebluebook.com/classifieds/cgi-bin/classified/classified.p l. I hope they'll list something soon.