ID that 8" Celestron

[Hijynx (Benn)]

A colleague of mine is moving house and has an 8" Celestron that he wants to move on as he won't have room in his new place for it. He asked me if I'd like to buy it. I have had a look but have not seen this C8 set up before. The OTA I silver with no markings on the corrector plate or OTA other than the word Celestron. The mount is the classic single armed design with Nextstar written on the top. The OTA is attached to the mount by a thin metal rod, rather than the vixen bar that I am used to seeing. On top of the OTA is a GPS unit with CN 16 GPS written on it.
I think this is a Nextstar 8i but am not sure. He said he bought it new from Bintel a few years ago but I think time may have gotten away on him as the pigtail cord from the GPS unit to the OTA is splitting. I have only ever seen this in old UHF hand units. A little research indicates this may be 15 years + in age? Haven't managed to get the hand controller to display anything yet but it does move the scope in both axis. The OTA is pristine with sharp stars through the eyepiece.

What model do you all think this is? If the hand controller and GPS don't work, is it going to be worth the effort and what do you think it is worth?

[MortonH]

Looks like a very early Nexstar.

https://www.cloudynights.com/article...exstar-8-r1478

http://www.company7.com/celestron/products/sch14.html

The mount is likely to fail at some point due to its age (and you say the hand controller doesn't display anything) so if I was buying I'd base my offer on the value of the OTA only, or maybe with a token $100 extra for the mount. See attached screenshot from Ed Ting's site.

And since the OTA doesn't have a standard Vixen rail, you'd need to replace it (assuming the OTA has holes for the normal rail).