On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:47:33 -0700, "Jan Owen"
wrote:

I would still characterize the overall highest PERCENTAGE of excellent
achromatic objectives as likely to come from D&G, though I've certainly
seen excellent examples of Jaegers' objectives as well...

Wasn't my point.

Perhaps the reason we don't see many D&G scopes with focal ratios below
f/12, is because they are committed to producing uniformly high quality
objectives consistent with their reputation, and realize that it's not
easy to consistently deliver the quality they're committed to at shorter
focal ratios, especially in the price range they work within...

Certainly could be one reason but the other would be the difficulty in
making a good short f/ratio lens in moderate size. Is easier to say
no thanks I'll stick with the easier ones to make.

Regardless, I sure wouldn't buy ANY telescope, or objective, on E-Bay...

To each his own. I've bought several nice ones there before and
cheap.

Pete