The Teleport website says that Bray is licensed for sales outside North
America and that Tom will continue to make all scopes sold here.
Andrew Pierce
-----Original Message-----
From: sf-bay-tac-bounces@No-Spam [mailto:sf-bay-tac-bounces@No-Spam]On
Behalf Of Mark Wagner
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2003 1:54 PM
To: tac
Subject: [TAC] RE: Re: Teleport's new pricing!
Andrew Pierce (andrew@No-Spam) said:
One needs to compare those prices to the other scopes that are readily
available to European consumers, not market price in northern California,
where every third garage has a partly finished dob in it. The pricing is in
pounds for a reason.
Andrew Pierce
IIRC, the purpose to go with Bray in GB was for production. Toe Noe
made/makes only 12 Teleports a year. There is no way Noe is going to
increase production here on the US side making scopes by hand, as he has
been doing. It is through Bray in England that he/they hope to have the
capacity to supply a scope, as the e-mail reply I received states, within
six months of order. Currently, the wait is at least 2 years from Tom.
I suspect the price in pounds may reflect more some of the British flavor
reply that I had seen from Chris Marriot, author of Skymap, who would
regularly have a snit on sci.astro.amateur reading other folks postings and
reply remind everyone that the world is not US-centric.
I also think that the US has to be the market for the Teleport... the US
is by far the largest market for high end telescopes, and there I suspect
that only folks with "partly finished Dobs in their garages" are going to
appreciate the type of product the Teleport appears to be - in the same
league at minimum as some of the fine refractors, StarMaster Dobs, Obsession
and other higher end designs. Perhaps someone will correct me, which will
be fine, but I do not see anything in Europe approaching the sort of quality
astro-gear (Newtonians especially) that we have available here in the US.
Japan is there on the refractor side, but Dobs? I don't think so.
Teleport in the UK plans to market to the US, I'm pretty confident of
that.
But those prices!
Mark