NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Buying a sextant- a cautionary tale.
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 Apr 30, 06:54 EDT
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 Apr 30, 06:54 EDT
Requesting more photos is absolutely excellent advice. But a buyer should bear in mind that no quantity of photos can guarantee that a sextant, purchased from any source, will be free from arc error, for example, or loose components or even defects in design (like insufficient shades). You've got to buy it and try it. The best assumption to have in mind when you buy a sextant on ebay especially is that you can always re-sell it and probably for more or less the same money you paid. There are transaction costs, shipping costs, etc., so on a $400 sextant, you should probably expect to lose $40 turning it around. And if you're just a bit clever at spotting a bargain or just a bit creative in writing up a description when you sell it, chances are fair that you will make at least that much money in profit. Effectively then, you're renting a sextant for nothing. Keep it for two months, or keep it for two years, and then move on to another one. You'll get much more experience with different designs. By the way, as a hypothetical, how could you use a sextant with a dead section, from whatever cause, close to zero degrees? The sextant would certainly be a nuisance, but it would still work. -FER 42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W. www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
