WestOfPecos said:
I know the price must come as a shock - but there are no cheap AND good optics.
Well, both "good" and "cheap" are words that require a reference point before they can effectively be used in this context.
It really doesn't matter to the guy who's buying someone else's "throw away" 1989 Toyota Camry for $750 that he can get a much nicer Camry for $25,000. If it took him 6 months or even a year to save the $750, or worse he can't even afford that but his other car died, it doesn't really matter what can be had for 2 or 3 or 20 times as much.
"Good" and "Cheap" can quite effectively go together in optics. The mid-range Mueller scopes are a good example. They're not NightForce, but they're not Tasco either. I have a Mueller Eradicator 8.5-25x. on my .204 that has served me very well for a number of years.
Is it a "good" scope? Well, the parallax markings are wrong, it doesn't track very well and it's a tad sensitive to shock. However, a few minutes eyeballing distant objects of known range and fiddling with the parallax learned me the real settings. It's on a .204, so tracking is essentially irrelevant. Set it and forget it. I can use holdover on woodchuck sized targets out to at least 450 yards. Shock? Yeah, that can be a little annoying.
However, I tried using a $600 scope and it was really hard, since I had to just imagine it being there. It was 3x my budget and so it's quality improvements over the Mueller were imaginary. I couldn't hit crap just imagining it sitting there. I decided the Mueller was much better than just imagining how good that $600 scope would be.