Can you help me price my mint Criterion Dynamax 8 ?

[picard63]

Hi everyone, Can you help me price my mint Criterion Dynamax 8 ?

I bought during the early 1980s. IMO it's mint, has spent 99% of last 25 years in attic.

Any and all help appreciated ... I will sell at price where someone may resell ... but I don't want to be taken for a ride. I am sure you appreciate that.

Scope is now in Long Island, NY

Thanks in advance for your feedback. Picard


Here are some picts:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_8HqPfzvXECNTBmTVlVcjhTSG8?usp=sh aring

[alocky]

Check out the classic telescopes forum on cloudy nights.
https://www.cloudynights.com/forum/62-classic-telescopes/
Although I'd cheerfully hand over my youngest child for a collectors piece like that, you're going to get a far better price in the US than Australia (which is where the majority of users on this forum live).
cheers,
Andrew.

[picard63]

Andrew,

Ouch ... didn't see Australia in the website header. Funny. Ok thanks for the link, collector's piece - really? ... sounds promising. Thanks again. Picard

[brian nordstrom]

:lol: Ouch , the Dynamax's were a design and manufacture of the C8 Celestron and Celestron sued them for that ??? welcome to America.

Because of this most of the money that should have gone into R&D went into Lawyers ,,, shame .

Apart from that rubbish the Criterion's were quite good , their engineering ,,, eg.
Tripods , mounts were way better than Celestron and Meade at the time , optics well ? they suffered because of the legal battles happening ,, a real shame :mad2: .

Price ? :question: with case , tripod and OTA in good condition I would say Max of 1.5k here but as said in the USA this would be worth much more , I would love to have one .

Classic Telescope .

ps. thanks for the thread , :thumbsup: .
Brian.

[picard63]

Thanks Brian - that is good information and thank you for sharing! I posted on cloudynights and craigslist and will see what the market demand is. Again, thanks for freely sharing :-) Peter

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/580376-mint-criterion-dynamax-8-scope-gold-tripod/

https://newyork.craigslist.org/lgi/for/6170433574.html

[Astromelb]

Dear Peter,
Thank you for your post.
I recently sold my unit from my personal collection - http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=145365
I sold it for AUD $ 500 eight months ago, including three new Plossl eyepieces to get a beginner going in astronomy.
I paid US$ 700 for it (without eyepieces) five years ago, excluding shipment - so somewhere in the range of US$500 to US$700 would be it's approximate value.
My unit was also hardly used as it was part of a massive telescope collection (over 150 units) which I have been trimming actively for some time.
They are rare. In really good condition they are suitable for enthusiastic collectors, or for a beginner to astronomy.
Good luck.
Rgds,
Cris.

[Astromelb]

Dear Peter,
An an ex owner and actual user of one of these telescopes I made my own mind up.
My findings are that it is actually quite a reasonable unit, nowhere near as bad as internet web research may try to claim.
My feedback is as an owner and user, not a web jockey :(
May I recommend you make your own mind up.

[alocky]

As an actual purchaser of one of the telescopes in your collection that you claimed to be optically 'perfect', I can honestly state from experience that you can't even recognise a 1/2 wave spherical error.
These ad hominem attacks on anyone who questions your hyperbole are very tiresome.

[LewisM]

Criterion Dynamax 8's are recognised as amongst the WORST SCTs ever made with average at best optics. There is a very large discussion of them on the Cloudy Nights classics forum - look for topics by Rolo. He yook MANY years and many iterations of the Dynamax to find one with good optics. And he bench tests all of them. The discussion includes commentary from a former Criterion employee.

Plus the sonotube OTAs can fail after a while. The resin used to impregnate the cardboard becomes brittle.

Its all well documented.

Still they are a classic, just not a high performer. US sales price are all sub-$1000, usually sub $500.

[Wavytone]

I'll suggest these are only suitable as ornaments for a lounge or shop now - they are way past their use-by date. No value as museum pieces as they aren't historically significant, nor are they collectible - unlike a Questar.

The mirror coatings will have oxidised by now, the tube is questionable and the rest thoroughly outdated.

And that's before getting to the topic of optical quality. I had a look through two in the early 1980's and they were not a match for an orange C8 that I had at the time. Secondly the ones I saw had corrector plates without antireflection coatings, so there goes 15-20% of the light for starters.

[LewisM]

Rare? Maybe in Australia, but in the USA they are far from rare - quite common actually, and in some cases, you cannot give them away, or sell for absolute peanuts (I mean, sub-$100).

There is NOTHING special about them apart from representing a niche in US telescope making history, which admittedly at the time was VERY average at best (Roland Christen certainly turned that around).

Webjockey here myself, but I wouldn't touch one with a barge pole based on the multitude of negative posts about them. Perhaps your metrological standards are different to others Cris. Recommending them to a beginner in astronomy is detrimental to the hobby!

[LewisM]

Spot on. They don't even come close to the old C8's or the various Meade offerings. The later Bushnell ones are apparently even worse! Having sheet-canned the Dynamax 8, the 6" was apparently fine, as were their Newtonians.

Here is a "glowing" article on them:

https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/user-reviews/telescopes/schmidt-cassegrains-scts/criterion-dynamax-8-schmidt-cassegrain-telescope-r2073

There are literally hundreds of other hate threads about them too.

A short history on Criterion:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rhill/DYNASCOPE/criterion.html/

Seems Cris may have owned the only good one in existence.

[issdaol]

Perhaps it was fitted with repurposed Dairy Stainless Steel and Maserati Parts !?!? :lol:

[LewisM]

Only dairy industry I detect is the smell of a good dose of BS. :rofl:

[The Mekon]

well I think the O.P. now has a an idea as to what this old scope is worth, yes the Dynamax never had a good reputation - and that was against SCTs that looking back, were not as good as their ads suggested.

Agree that in the USA the O.P. will be doing well to raise a few hundred on this one.

[picard63]

Thank you everyone - for the pricing feedback, and for amusing debate and comments :-)

Astromelb - On a quality or price question, I'm uneducated on both, my original question was on price for selling.

[jenchris]

Mint are rare but I'm still looking for a banana mango one

[LewisM]

The really rare ones are salted caramel.

[ausastronomer]

This is consistent with my experience also. I can't comment as an owner because having used a couple of different samples of these telescopes over the past 40 years it was not a telescope I would wish to own. Unfortunately quite a few of these were sold on the back of the reputation and performance of the excellent Criterion RV6 and RV8 Dynascopes (Newtonians) which had excellent optics supplied by a 3rd party.

As directly quoted from Page 145 and 146 of Rod Molisse's guide to used SCT's, which can be downloaded here. (https://skywatch.brainiac.com/used/used_sct.pdf)


Uncle Rod’s Used CAT Buyer’s Guide 145

Uncle Rod’s DOG Pound
Where We Separate the CATs from the Dogs

Criterion Dynamax 8

The Criterion SCT, which came to market not long after the Celestron Orange Tube in the early 1970s, was the first competitor Celestron faced. How good a competitor? The Dynamax 8 is an attractive telescope, if obviously more cheaply made than Celestron’s SCT. Reading the specs of the Dynamax, you might even think it might actually have been a better buy than the comparably priced Celestron (the Dynamax cost about $800.00 without tripod, just like the C8).

According to company literature, the Dynamax was equipped with “exquisite optics” that allow the lucky owner to “[Take] professional quality pictures with ease and reliability.” The drive sounds good, too, being described as an “AC/DC manual drive” which is “Fully capable of long, ‘locked on’ exposures.” Criterion didn’t neglect accessories, either. The Dynamax purchaser would receive three eyepieces, a drive corrector, and an 8x50 finder scope as standard equipment. Sounded good, but the Criterion was never real competition for Celestron. Was the Dynamax 8 just a telescope that was ahead of its time?

Sadly, no. There’s a lot bad about the Dynamax, starting with the optics. I don’t doubt some good scopes were produced, but after 40 years I have yet to run into a Dynamax whose optics were any better than fair. Many of them were poor, very poor—some I’ve tried being nearly unusable. One reason for this may have been Criterion’s approach to matching an SCT’s optics set—primary, secondary and corrector.

Both Meade and Celestron take pains to put together a set of optical elements that perform well together (Meade tries different combinations of correctors, secondaries, and primaries ‘til a “match” is found; Celestron applies some hand figuring to each scope’s secondary as needed to ensure the three components match). Criterion, or so I’ve been told, apparently didn’t think this was necessary, assembling optical sets from correctors, secondary mirrors, and primary mirrors in the order they came off the assembly line. If a combination of Dynascope optics worked well together, it was luck. Some of the quality problems also relate to changes that had to be made in Criterion’s corrector fabrication process due to legal considerations apparently involving

Uncle Rod’s Used CAT Buyer’s Guide 146

infringement on Celestron’s proprietary Master Block process for fabricating the all-important lens. Criterion claimed that the scope’s mounting and drive were perfect for astrophotography, but even a brief glance at one of these SCTs shows that was hardly the case. Start with the fork. It was a light and flimsy one powered by a single AC motor and spur gears. What of Criterion’s claim that the scope had a DC drive? Spurious. The company felt justified in making this claim because the included drive corrector could be powered by a 12 volt battery! If that is the case, a C8 Orange-tube equipped with a standard drive corrector could be considered to have a DC drive too. The furnished drive corrector wasn’t anything to get excited about either. It turned out to be a simple single-axis model that used a knob instead of push-buttons for guiding.

One thing the company was correct about in their advertisements was the sturdiness of the Dynamax’s resin-impregnated tube. The CAT used what was basically a cardboard tube, there was no way around that fact, but despite fears of amateurs of the time, this tube was very durable. It really was, as Criterion claimed “strong enough to fire rockets out of.” The main problem with the Criterion Dynamax 8 is what’s inside the tube. The Dynamax was a valiant effort, but it was just not a good telescope, and is not a bargain at any price. Even a free Dynamax would likely lead to more frustration than observing pleasure.

The preceding is not meant to denigrate the efforts of the people who worked to bring the Dynamax SCT to life. Many are still proud of the work they did on this scope, and have told me so. Their SCT obviously just didn’t quite come together, however. If it had come together for Criterion, there would be at least some examples of the Dynamax 8 with very good to excellent optics. Where are these scopes? The Dynamax was, at heart, an attempt to bolster a company that was famous for its fine Newtonian reflectors (the oft praised optics of these came from a 3rd party, incidentally) at a time when GEM Newtonians were declining precipitously in popularity due to the C8.

What happened to Criterion? They hung on until the 80s came in. Despite the failure of the Dynamax SCT, their good reputation, earned from twenty years of producing superb Newtonian reflectors like the famous RV-6, kept ‘em going. For a while. Despite the approach of Comet Halley, which quite a few scope makers thought would pave the streets with gold, the owners of Criterion had had enough and sold out to Bausch and Lomb.

[LewisM]

Thanks John.

After a while people start to believe their own falacious sales pitches.

[Visionoz]

... being so practised in the art they become perfect ... :P

Cheers
Bill