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Unfortunately nowadays the main use of a "sextant" is apparently for store 
windows decoration. And other decorations.

The result is that when you search for a  "sextant" on E-Bay, you get ~3000 items,
most of them are "replicas", "imitations" etc. And the sellers frequently do 
not care to include the word "replica"
or "immitation" in the title of the sale. I am really surprised how many such decorations are produced.

This makes the search somewhat difficult.
One way is to search for "sextant" in the department of "Maritime navigation instruments".
Currently this gives 56; this still contains many replicas/imitations. Most of them can be eliminated by
restricting the price to >$100. But then you may loose many items, since not all real sextants are
listed in the "Maritime navigation instruments".

Fortunately, with some practice, one can immediately tell from the photo 
whether this is a real thing or immitation.

Alex.
 

________________________________________
From: NavList@fer3.com [NavList@fer3.com] on behalf of Bob Peterson [NoReply_Peterson@fer3.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 2, 2023 10:30 AM
To: eremenko@math.purdue.edu
Subject: [NavList] Re: Pseudo-sextants

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A string of thoughts........

1)  newbie astronomers get caught by cheap telescopes.

2)  there are a bunch of other pseudo-instruments: pelorus, compass, 
theodolite, box sextant, astrolabe, etc.

3)  "buy first; learn later":  shown dramaticlly in movie "All is lost".

4)  I've also been target of friends: "you're gonna love this........".  have 
given ALL away.  agree with POS; but, they come with nice teak boxes.  ;-)

5)  who builds these?  and where?

It's all discouraging to learning the discipline of navigation and astronomy.  
Thanks Frank & David for comments.

   

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