[Wavytone]

The Saxon 203mm mak is curious. I first saw one in the window of Astro Optics back in the days when the shop was in Clarke St Crows Nest, mid to late '80s maybe; and at the time I was fairly sceptical regarding products from a totally unknown brand.

Optical production in China is complex.

In Yunnan province around Kunming there are numerous optical factories which originated in the 1950's from the Chinese military production needs, with commercial products being a sideline. These make batches of equipment to engineering specifications, minimum quantities typically start at 1,000 units. Their main output is boring stuff like the lenses for mobile phones (in tens of thousands of units), cheap camera lenses, the junk in K-Mart, loupes, school microscopes, magnifying glasses to binoculars, and occasionally it extends to eyepieces and small telescopes.

Then there are the "re-badging" companies - Saxon is one, Bosma another. Even Vixen and Celestron. In essence they buy the products in bulk (thousands) from whichever factory was contracted, finish the complete assemblies (eg fit finders, clamps, focusers and throw in an eyepiece or two) slap their label on it and put it in a box with their name on the outside. They then on-sell these wholesale into "channels" that eventually reach the international agents, retailers and eventually sold to the public.

IMHO some company contracted a quantity of these scopes to be manufactured and traded these to the branding outfits - Saxon is one, and later Bosma was another that probably picked up the end of the production run.

Several years ago the Bosma Chinese website briefly featured a 203mm mak "system" with an OTA identical to the Saxon one right down to the unusual ribbed clamp around the OTA - it was both cosmetically and optically identical - except it was all white, complete with finder, a mount (looked like a GP knockoff), eyepieces, various adapters and so-on. It subsequently vanished from their website.

Unlke the Japanese factories, the Chinese didn't adopt the practice of applying a discrete "makers mark" to identify the real origin. Even their telescopes don't have serial numbers. So basically there really is no way of knowing which factory a product really came from, nor the date of manufacture. I'm certain some things were sitting in storage for decades till they were eventually sold.