Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Your Thoughts On Buying Used Nikon Scopes?

Here's a couple of very, very rare Nikons.

At one time, Nikon was interested in getting into the short range Benchrest arena. They had decided that all the BR scopes were going to go through a single U.S. source that would do everything...import, sales and warranty service under one roof. They made some prototype 36X scopes and the distributor (who was a BR competitor) forwarded 6-8 of these to different individuals, including myself, for testing and feedback. The testing was to be hush-hush and none of the test scopes had any badging on them to identify them as Nikons. They performed very well....basically they were the Monarch UCC lenses and adjustments in a fixed power platform. My single suggestion was to offer a 7 MOA raised reticle so the wind flags would be more visible. That suggestion was apparently going to be implemented as an option. Anyone familiar with Nikons will recognize the turrets and A.O. assy., even without any badging.

When everything looked like it was a go, Nikon pulled the plug on the program for whatever reason. They had stocked the to-be distributor with parts and all the tools for service work and he had hired a savvy guy to run the service end of the business.

To make a weird deal even weirder, a year after they rolled up the mat on the BR deal, I got a package via UPS that contained a fixed 12X version of the same scope. The phone number on the packing slip was disconnected.

The 36X on a 30BR and a sleeved 222 that I did a period restoration on. It's one of my 'iron ball' test scopes:



The 12X version on my Savage 112J single shot in 25-06: