According to one poster here, who is is very well respected on my fronts, and not just optics, I was told that Leupold's QC really dropped off right around the mid 2000's. Seem to recall that that was around the time when one of the last Leupold family members retired which seemed to trigger the start of their QC drop off. My own feeling, and I also agree with the person I referred to, that was when Leupold really started to expand their product line (the Zombie should be a good indicator of their distancing from the fine company they used to be, and I believe that unless they really expanded their workforce, this is probably where QC started to fall off. It's sad that this is the case, as myself included along with many other posters here, was a dedicated Leupold scope owner and all my rifle wore them. Also, the poster here seemed to get the feeling that the company seem to really, really focus to much on large profits as their interactions seemed much more profit driven and there was much less talk about construction of their once notable reliable scope line. to me, when I thought about Leupold scopes, the first thoughts that came to mind were, ruggedness, light weight, very fog proof, good value and great CS, which fortunately is still solid.
