This topic is locked
I reached out to a frequent contributor to the classics forum for the January eBay restart, Kitfox. He has traveled a path familiar to many of us, in his pursuit of the hobby. Steve had this to share when I asked about his interest and how he got started.
"Everyone here has been shaped a bit by their birth year, and context in which they grew up…I think that will be obvious in my individual case as well. I am a University of North Carolina Tarheel, born and bred. My class was the same as Mr. Michael Jordan’s 
, so in my time, I grew up running to the mail box for the next Edmund’s Scientific, Celestron and then Meade Catalogs. I was on the tail-end of Cave, Unitron and countless others, but they are still in the fog of memory. And the ads in Sky and Telescope and Astronomy? Needless to say, I dreamed a lot, but in a time of only two modest gifts a year (birthday and Christmas), my little home-made copier lens (Edmund-sourced?) scope had to suffice through high school…,
…then came college and my world changed. I moved into a coed dorm; freshman year is completely lost to burnt brain cells. But then I discovered North Campus…The Morehead Observatory (the same building the Apollo guys learned how to navigate by the stars) had an amazing Perkin Elmer (Boller and Chivens) 24” f/16 Cassegrain! My eyes were opened. I took every physics and astronomy class they offered, and Dr. Wayne Christianson became my hero. I spent many a night with my eye glued to the guidescope, then the next morning taking in the perfume of the darkroom with two or three freshly-exposed glass plates. And my days were spent helping set up the university’s new optics lab. It was like heaven! But my degree ended up being in business, so on to boring textile manufacturing 
…
…but now I had a little bit of income! That ad for the new Televue Genesis caught my eye. I called and, lo and behold, Mr. Nagler answered the phone. Had one of the initial run in his hands at that moment, said come and get it! I literally did and Al handed it over to me personally 
. A few years on the Panoramic mount, then a used G11, then competition for sky time from a used Meade 12” SCT. The Genesis spent two nights with me atop Mount Mitchell on my birthday (January, brrrrr) for my most memorable views of the Pleiades. And several trips to the Florida Keys that added 3 complete Messier Marathon notches to the Genesis’ focuser in the 90s. Then life and career hit hard, and a dry spell in the hobby 
…
…but I never stopped my Astronomy and Sky and Telescope subscriptions. And those ads kept coming with them. Astrophysics. Takahashi. Meade. Celestron. Orion. By the early 2010s, I was getting back into the hobby. Astromart caught my eye. Joined Cloudy Nights again. And here I am!
Luckily, the comfortable confines of the Classic Telescopes forum support the dual-nature of my hobby, as a collector (shunned, despised and ridiculed elsewhere) and an observer. And I love the pursuit of the unusual and premium. Some may argue my tastes aren’t classic enough. But there’s older stuff mixed in. Pentax, Nikon, Takahashi and Vixen, anything gets my attention.
My favorites? The Takahashi FCTs and old battleship gray FCs. Pentax SDPs, SDUFs and SDHFs.
The Nikon EDs (especially the little 80mm astrograph). And, of course, the whole lineup of Vixen FL scopes (if anyone has the old FL55, we need to talk)
And the new to me Tinsley 12” and 8” CCs 
I am finishing up the Backyard Observatories ROR to house them, and now have six mounts to bejewel with some of these. Michael said I had to limit my picture sizes, so here is the current collection status at Kitfox Acres Museum/Observatory".
Thank you Steve for the fun read.Better be ready once you finish that observatory,you might hear a bunch of us knocking on your door!
The basic guideline for this thread is to list ads and auctions for classic/vintage scopes and associated accessories that others may be interested in. Do not post your own ads or the ads of your friends, this includes items you may be trying to sell for someone else. We request that you do not post photos from ads. If you must have some reference to a photo in the post, post a link to the photo, not the photo itself. Concentrate on the item for sale, and not the seller.
Please post a live link to the item. Do not post "PM me for the link".Short discussions can take place about the items listed. When quoting a post, edit the quoted post to include only the part you are replying to. Do not post the entire ad text, or large blocks of it, without permission from the author. Keep on topic, please!
Buyer Beware- CN is not responsible for any of the ads or auctions posted here or their content. There are some scams floating around, so do your homework before pursuing any ad.
and this note from the moderators
Let's remember everybody, there's no one place that has all the best-used scope finds just as there's no one place that never has anything. All have something. No need to beat subjective matter, whatever the topic, into the ground. For the sake of all of us who love the classic forum, please keep moving the thread forward. Remember that many of your fellow forum members are already vintage themselves. Instead of restating your opinions over and over, consider sharing something new, insightful, or otherwise constructive to the topic at hand.
Must have been a sizeable telescope to have a large auxiliary focus. There is likely a huge accurate flat inside. New in box Bessler enlarger lenses. You could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff 
