Just wondering how much more the money buys you.

The problem with optics is that the last little incremental improvements are the most expensive. I.e have the highest marginal cost as the economists would say.

So while the Swaro is going to be a better scope that relatively small improvement over the Nikon comes at a very high price.

Think of it this way with scopes as an example:

BSA is cheap.

Simmons or Tasco is a little more expensive but clearly better.

Double that and you can get into Nikon Prostaff or Buckmaster depending on model. Now you're into some good stuff that will get the job done.

But you can step on up to Nikon Monarch or Zeiss Conquest. More money sure. Better scope sure. Worth double the price again? To me yes, but not to all.

But why stop there? Step up to the Swaro AV line for double the price again. Is it double better? No. Does it provide you a whole lot more when there's 6 minutes of legal shooting light left? Oh, yeah. Does it provide you much more at noon? No.

For the ultimate, double the price again for the European Swaro or Zeiss.

Ultimately, it becomes a trade off for price versus that last little bit of performance. That decision is one each person makes for themselves.

I put a Swaro AV on my .30-06 because I have such extreme confidence in the gun. It's my go to rifle. I use it a lot. I want it to be ready for anything including a monster buck with 6 minutes of shooting light left. So I spent the money. My .243 that I mostly play with has a Pentax Gameseeker on it. Nice, serviceable scope? Yes. Swaro? Clearly not. But I don't have it in my hand when a trophy buck is apt to walk out with 6 minutes of light left either.

Hope this rambling makes some sense.

LWD

I have. And LWD's rambling makes sense to me. I bought a Leica spotting scope. It is my one and only spotting scope and I want to damn sure see what I'm looking at. I struggled for years with "lesser" spotting scopes and finally saved my pennies and bought the one I will own in my lifetime. Bottom line: Buy the very best quality you can afford.

The Winter 2008 issue of Living Bird magazine ran a full blown test of spotting scopes and they put the KOWA TSN series at the very top, closely followed by Swarovski. A small notch below were Leica, Zeiss, Optolyth and Nikon

I ran a smaller test this past season and pretty much concur with their evaluation.