Thread: Russian Optics prices--too good to be true?

After reading d. m. ellington's Little Things that work BIG thread, I decided to check out the spy scope on the Russian Optics site. Dudes! or should I say, Tovarishchi! Look at those prices! A 27-jewel mechanical watch for 45 bucks? Something's got to be wrong here. Please enlighten me as to what it is so I don't get sucked into RWAD (Russian Watch Acquisition Disorder).

~Rich

I bought the Paratrooper version of the wristwatch about 10 years ago, you get what you pay for. Admittedly it did keep good time and for some reason I am awfully hard on watches. If you do buy one, get another band, they are weak.

Thanks, nun2sharp, it's always good to hear someone's actual experience. --And to be reminded that you get what you pay for.

~Rich

I have not used any of their watches. However the optics are outstanding for the price.

Yes, the optics do look good. Besides the little spy scope, I'm tempted by the opera glasses. The BW and I actually do go to the opera, once a season at least--and being in a state of genteel poverty (gentility optional), we sit in the nosebleed section. The sound is great at the Civic Opera House no matter where you are, and the sightlines are good too for that matter, but sometimes you like to get a sharper view of those blurry little people down there.

Russian optics and specially vintage are usually quality stuff. I have few pocket watches, one camera from the sixties and WW2 binoculars that my grandfather got when he was at war. I've never used the camera but those watches and binoculars are very good.

That reminds me that I had a Zenit-B camera that I got in the Soviet Union in 1972. It was an SLR, completely manual (which suited me fine, Luddite that I am), with a copy of a Zeiss lens (so I was later told by an old Russian camera repairman), and I thought it was quite good. It was stolen in an apartment burglary a couple of years after I got it.

~Rich

I have a russian pocketwatch, a molnija I got maybe 15 years ago. I think I paid 30 bucks for it. It runs, not great but it runs. Looking at the mechanical mvmt its so crude its a miracle it does run. There are several Russian watches that cost more in the few hundred dollar category that are ok but not what you're looking at.