TELE VUE 13mm NAGLER Type 1
Generally considered the first modern ultrawide telescope eyepiece design with widespread use in amateur astronomy, and an impressive handful of glass!
Has both 1.25 and 2.00 inch barrels, as pictured.
Absolute auction, no reserve price, starting bid $0.01
Many more photos below.
The following item description was written by the consignor, a well know member of the astro community...the owner of Astrobuffet and former head of MAPUG.
13mm Nagler Type 1, very solidly built. This is the Nagler that made Naglers famous and introduced amateur astronomy to ultrawide eyepieces, or vice versa depending upon your point of view.
NEW IN BOX. I bought it from a fellow dealer at a trade show as "never used, new old stock", probably about 6-8 years ago, and I 99% believe him. I have only taken it out a few times to look at and photograph. The glass, body, and 2 inch barrel look pretty pristine to me, though on the bottom of the 1.25 inch barrel it looks like it got some "shelf wear"... maybe from sitting in a display case in a store, on a table at shows, or maybe inserted into a 1.25 diagonal a few times to demo the newfangled 1.25/2 combined barrels, etc.
I have never used it, and kept it out of harm's way in a large safe in an air-conditioned home, solely as a collectible.
There is a dimple on one corner of the box, which could be from stacking things on top of the TV hard box in my safe, or maybe a shipping or dropping ding to the box at some point in its history. It's pretty small/insignificant, but I know some of you are as observant of this stuff as me (I can't wait to hear everyone scream when I show a macro photo of a setscrew mark on an A-P refractor tube or something like that!)
It was made in Taiwan, so I think there was an earlier release of the same eyepiece made in Japan, but I'm not sure. I've left the original $395 price tag on it, which was marked down to $299 at some point. They are out of production for probably about a decade now, so you will be hard pressed to find another one in anything resembling the condition of this one. Instead of inflating the original price to 2008 dollars, or trying to figure out how many survive in what range of conditions like a coin collector does, just have some fun competing with fellow eyepiece collectors to see what the market value really is for a vintage new-old-stock sample of this historic turning point in eyepiece design and marketing.
Feel free to ask questions about this or any other telescope equipment we are selling from the personal collection of the owner of Astrobuffet.
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