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A lucky find! Celestron 26mm "NJ" Vintage plossls


mike bacanin

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I've been very lucky to acquire not one, but a matched bino pair of vintage Celestron 26mm silvertop plossls with the very rare "NJ"barrel stamping.

I've always had a high regard for the vintage all silver Celestron plossls. They're made by Vixen Japan in the early 80's, and are possibly the finest plossls bar the televues.

It appears these "NJ" stamped eyepieces were a very costly prototype to the original Televue NJ smoothsides. The only items contracted to have the NJ stamp were made for Televue. It appears that the same optical house contracted by Televue let maybe 50 or so of these slip out before Al Nagler put a stop to them.

These were branded with the Celestron label, and afterwards the eyelens design was modified in favour of a less expensive design to mass produce.

I was happy enough when i found this out, then a friend in Canada offered me a 2nd matching eyepiece. I was amazed to find another. They are really beautiful, with the sharpest field stop, nice coatings, and a fov app 49 degrees.

I'm waiting to try them in the Denks.

Mike

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Hi Michael,

Yes, the Circle V's are lovely eyepieces, the 30mm is a rare thing to find.

Hi Glen,

It was a nightmare!! 2 hours on the M60/62! :)

Thanks again,

Mike

Not good to hear Mike. It's a problem with being just north of Manchester. One little accident and everything goes down the pan.

Could be some clear skies at the weekend for first light.

Glen.

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Hi Michael,

Yes, the Circle V's are lovely eyepieces, the 30mm is a rare thing to find.

Hi Glen,

It was a nightmare!! 2 hours on the M60/62! :)

Thanks again,

Mike

A very nice pair Mike ;)

I used to have a 30mm from that range - it was a lovely EP and, naturally, one I wish I'd not sold :p

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  • 6 years later...

Old thread I know but old EP's too !  

Just found this sleeping on ABS, feels solid, looks clean (Cheers Peter).  Just shows you need not spend a small fortune to get some quality glass.  This one is a circle v not the NJ marked.  Still I look forward to looking through this as its currently my low power 'wide view' EP.   I recently started collecting random EP's......is this normal ? :)

 

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Hello Jabeoo and talking about dragging up the past with this thread?. I think you are turning into a collectionist with your habit, and welcome to the club

I love picking up some of the odd older eyepieces,  if they are something of quality like old vixen, televues, RG then so much the better. It's great to compare some of the older glass with the new High cost items in these modern times. And a lot of the older items hold up well on optical ability, and I love trying them in the frac where I can really see how well they are doing , pretty good with some of the Japan items, they do not hold up so well in the fast dob though.

The good thing is if they are not to your taste you can usually sell them on with either no loss or little loss after experimenting with them if they are not to your satisfaction.  

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Seriously...... very good.  Comfortable eye relief, immersive to the crisply defined field stop, sharp across 90-95% of the FOV. Near to parfocal with modern TV plossls.  These are a steal for the cost.  Crazy really when you think about it. 

If you move off axis too much they black out so they force your eye to remain on axis. 

 

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