Dear Christian,
260 GBP or so would more likely be the asking price of an excellent instrument, carried on the catalog of a commercial business (which includes sales taxes etc), freshly and professionnally fully overhauled, in as new condition, accurately calibrated on a specialised optical rig and ready to be legally used for navigation purposes on an airplane or ship, with a 1 or 2 year warranty, perfect case, accessories, certificate of calibration, users manuals etc.
My advice is to avoid this deal, it's a rip off. No way this guy ever finds customers for his instruments at this price.
JPP
--- On Sun, 5/16/10, Christian Scheele <scheele@telkomsa.net> wrote:
From: Christian Scheele <scheele@telkomsa.net>
Subject: [NavList] Re: buying a Mark IX A bubble sextant
To: NavList@fer3.com
Date: Sunday, May 16, 2010, 6:46 AM
Dear Paul, Jean-Philippe, Douglas and Ian,
please allow me to collectively thank you for your helpful advice. I am negotiating the possible purchase of one or two Mark IX sextants. Buying a second model on offer would to my mind be an additional option should it might be necessary for me to cannibalise one in order to assemble one model which is complete in parts that can then be fully overhauled. The seller is in Durban and I live in Cape Town about 1000 miles away, so I am glad that you have put some hard and fast criteria at my fingertips with
which I can probe these instruments from a distance. The seller, who claims not to be knowledgable in the Mark IX's use - I suspect that he mistook the total instrument error of 2,5 minutes error certified on the label for 2,5 seconds - is asking for a price equivalent to GBP 260 for each. In view of what can be regarded more or less as a consensus over an acceptable price range for the Mark IX, at least as far as Navlist members who have commented on the subject in this and recent related threads, "astronomical" is the only word that I can find to describe this offer and I expect the deal to fall through. Of course it is very unlikely that the instrument will not need callibration. In any event, through your help I am now in the position to roughly assess the models over the phone. Thanks again to everyone who invested their expertise and time in my request, I'll let you know how things go.
Christian
Scheele
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