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When I picked up a second hand Williams Megrez 80SD for about $400 it had real value. I had gone Newt 6" -> Mak 5" -> SCT 9.25" -> Refractor 3.5" and the sharpness of stars and contrast with the night sky was simply put very impressive. Once I added a 10:1 microfocuser I was in heaven.
A good quality, smaller refractor is a delight when paired with decent diagonal and better than average eye pieces. That said buying better than decent eye pieces of sizes 5mm, 8mm, 11mm, 13mm, 18mm, 22mm and 25+ mm is likely to set one back maybe $2K. And a decent mount to set everything up on is around $1.5K minimum.
So the entry costs are high when you add say 1-2 very decent eye pieces a EQ5 mount and your OTA + attachments. Maybe retailers should try and promote more astronomy clubs - so users could share and swap eye pieces and see the capabilities of different types of OTAs and mounts.
Otherwise it means a 8" -> 10" Dob plus 1-2 good eye pieces is your best lug-able starting point.
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