Royal Astro optical 90mm refractor

[stevenk1124]

Guys I am interested to know if anyone in Australia owns a Royal Astro Optical 90mm f16 Equatorial refractor rebranded as a Sears ?

If you do what is your assessment of the scope?

Steve

[stevenk1124]

The reason I ask is I have one -and have had it for years

The Build performance and images are are superb and it is near mint and complete with mount, finders, motor drive and rotary eyepiece.
It outperforms my 4 inch and 75mm Polarex/Unitrons hands down

- However it is not getting much use at present so thinking about possibly selling it to someone who will use it

It also seems that it may be the only one in Australia! but was hoping for comments to convince me to keep it

[The Mekon]

Steve,

Thanks for the last post. Made it a bit clearer to me. Having searched "Royal Astro" on cloudy nights I thought you may be the same SteveK on that forum who has commented on these scopes. I owned a 76mm Royal Astro (sold by AASC in Crows Nest) from 1968-71. No mention of the 90mm in their catalogue back then so I was sceptical as to its existence. Agree that these are a fine scope optically. Probably better than most Unitrons which seem more collectable.

[atalas]

Had the Royal 76..... years ago, a very sharp little scope....talk about snap into focus!

[Tropo-Bob]

If it is so good, can I ask as to why you would not keep this and sell the Polarex/Unitrons instead? They have more resale value and U would get to keep the scope that performs better.

[stevenk1124]

John Atalas and Bob
Yes I am the same on Cloudynights -

I also have a mint 76mm and a 60mm f20 Royal - superb performers, the latter which I am going to give away to a young student

Bob good question - I am trying to determine which to sell - Unitrons or the 90mm- strangely, even though the the unitron 102mm is larger it is actually easier to set up-

I am in a quandary as I have too many long focus refractors and need to choose which to keep. Too much clutter in fact :)

All my best guys

Steve

[torana68]

Old telescopes have limited resale options, Unitron , better or not, is what collectors want. Having said that the value of unitrons in Australia is just a small % of what you see in the USA. I’d say the Royal OTA is better but the Unitron mounts are better. I’d keep the Unitrons, they should bounce back in value one day. The Royals are probably doomed to a lower value and smaller market. Maybe if US collectors realised Unitron are not US made things would be different.

[stevenk1124]

Roger
That makes perfect sense. Thank you for that - it has helped

All my best