Hi Johnny,
These Saxon eyepieces are "clones" of the TMB Planetary Type II. When Thomas Black ('M' is the initial of his middle name) passed away a few years ago, the company that was contracted to manufacture the eyepieces for his company (and of his design), they gave the bird to the contract and started selling these eyepieces to whoever wanted them. This happened to all the TMB eyepiece lines, including the much lorded Paragon line.
Today, these same eyepieces go by many different names, but they are all essentially the same. And they are still very good eyepieces as they were when made under the proprietary contract. What made these eyepieces revolutionary in the day was Black's clever design and use of specific glass types, and these designs were also easy to manufacture, which is why they were not expensive then for the image punch they packed.
Original better than clone? Me, I don't think so. Here's the clue as to why:
Both the Paragon and the Planetary Type II both had optical flaws in them that made some of the individual eyepiece models better suited to some telescope designs over others. The 30mm Paragon is not well suited to fast Newtonians, but the 40mm is. The 6mm Type II was the weakest in the whole line, and the clones today also have this. Some people say there is a difference. The original branded ones are no longer produced, only clones (not a good description as they are not a copy but the same original design and manufacturer). Some people say they can see a difference, but I question that (I could be mistaken, but this needs a sincere blind testing of the two lots). I fear it may be a case of brand prejudice than objective viewing. Maybe with some of the copy lines there may be when a particular brand orders a run of eyepieces produced under their own badge and specifically seek cheaper coatings and what not - which makes no sense as the manufacturing costs of these eyepieces are so low anyway. Most changes to the eyepieces are just cosmetic, like silver barrels rather than matt black, or a different design to the body.
Are these Saxon eyepieces good? Yes they are. Like I mentioned above, the 6mm is the only one I would give a miss to. I have the 9mm and the 6mm copies - the 9mm stays in my eyepiece case, the 6mm not. In fact, I can see fainter stars in the 9mm than in my 8mm Vixen LVW which costs 5X as much and is considered one of the best eyepieces in the world. EDIT: I should also mention that the LVW is ever so slightly sharper in image than the TMB, but more elements comes at the cost of lower transmission. So price is not everything, but you need to do your research. They are not expensive, AND are head and shoulders above cheap short focal length plossls.
How can you tell if you have an original TMB Planetary Type II or a rip-off when the two EP bodies are of the same original design? The TMB original has the focal length noted as "mm", the other "MM". That's pretty much all as everything else, box, caps, type set, branding, is all the same.
Oh, I do stand by my words as I've also recently ordered a new
4MM TMB Type II from China. I had placed an ad in the IIS 'wanted' section for either an original or copy - I am not concerned as either will be just fine for me. If I had known AstroPete had them, I would have ordered it from him...
Alex.
While I may not use mine too often, it is one EP that I won't be giving up.
, but it opened my eyes to the poorly understood aspect of matching optics with optics, and that different EPs work best in certain scopes - even in the one product line there can be significant differences between individual models! The Pentax XW line is one of these!
You are right there Alex about the superview's they are a jem of an eyepiece , especially the 15 and 20mm's .
for the asking price . I use my SV's for outreach , it does not matter if someone ( child 
