By chance, thru a gift and 2 yardsales, I have ended up with three Sears binos. These are all from the '70's, marked SEARS then the model number, then COATED OPTICS, and all three have the usual 'leather-like' barrel grip.

Does anyone know anything about these, like where they were made, that kind of thing? The print on the binos and what accessories I have show them all the be about the early 70's time frame. they do not appear to bring much moo-lah, but they sure are neat and while heavy, I would really like to know how they compare to current market binos, thanks!

The practice of some company having "their" name put on some sort of OEM binocular has been around awhile.

I think there is some evidence that some of the Sears binoculars were from the same place as a lot of the Swift binoculars did. You might look at the flea-bay for Swift and see how some of those compare.

How are the field of view, there was a trend then to produce extraordinarily wide views. Eye relief sucked, but the views were wide.

I will have to look when I get home - there is basically no eye relief, is that what you mean by sucked?

They really do have very ggod field of view and depth, though. Only other pair of binos I have is a pair of the base-bottom Bushnell's and they are far superior to them (not a big stretch). Only other point of reference I have are the Leupys that you see for sale at Wally-World (my pa-in-law has those), and they are darned close optics wise, but waaaay heavier.

I have 3 pair of binos and a total of $31 dollars was spent. Thanks!

Yeah, there was essentially no eye relief, something on the order of 5mm or so. But the wide fov of some of those old binocs was far wider than what we see today. I have a set of that vintage Swift Nighthawk 8x40 that have a 499' fov. They were then and are still today very useable binoculars. So there were some pretty decent porros floating around in that era, so no doubt yours are pretty decent. That sounds like pretty decent bang for the buck too.

I would not expect them to have any water resistance capabilities either.