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  In the classified ads in local sailing magazines (Latitude 38, in the
San Francisco area, for example), there will invariably be ads that begin
"Cruising gear for sale.  CQR 35 anchor and 80 feet chain . . ."  Buried
in the ad there will be something like this:  "Sextant and box, $75" or
"Sextant, good condition, $35."

  That's where the class-A used sextants will be sold, and they can be
purchased with a high degree of confidence, if the buyer will only take
time to look them over carefully.  Many will be new, hardly taken once
from the box, purchased and put away along with a collection of other
ephemera that the prospective cruiser intends someday to get to.  These
will be Astra III-Bs in recent times, but before that probably Tamaya
Venus or Freiburger, both excellent sextants.  A brief inspection will
tell you whether this is a burnt out case, an old sextant which has been
abused or simply used until its mirrors fogged and lenses, too.  Sextants
tend to wear their pedigree on the surface.  Any good sextant book, e.g.,
Bruce Bauer's, will tell you how to take the sextant through a few
minutes of inspection, to see if the gearing works smootly, whether there
are signs of binding in the arc, whether the optics are free of haze, and
so on.

  The primary point is that the sextant is one of the first of the
cruiser's never-to-be-used gear to go, cheaply, very cheaply.  There are
very few places to wholesale out a sextant, so the average person does
not know what to do but put a classified ad, and the sextant ends up in
the midst of a collection of things to be sold, a clear invitation to
low-ball offers.

  Are there alternative ways to buy a used sextant?  Yes.  Try Bruce
White at Robt White Instrument Co. in Boston (800-992-3045).  White
maintains a small stock of used and first-class sextants, usually Tamaya
and Frei, but sometimes Cassens & Plath or C. Plath.  Do not buy a new
sextant, especially a C Plath, unless you are desperate to spend $3,000
when $1,000 or less will do.  Let someone else's dying dream span the gap
between those two figures.

  You can also talk to Becker, Lyman in Louisiana (800-535-6956) or
Infocenter in Maryland (800-852-0649), which like Bruce White sell
instruments they will stand behind.  But it is entirely possible, as
suggested here, to buy direct from the owner a nearly new, perfect
sextant, at a firesale price.

  Mal Misuraca
  Passage East
  Sausalito
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