Picked up an old Nikko Stirling 3-9x40 Gold Crown Wide Angle today for £25 inc' mounts.

It's old, not sure how old but it's all steel with a nice blued finich, even the caps. The glass is multi coated, seems to give good light transmission even at dusk. Duplex ret'.

The image, edge to edge, is superb across the entire 3-9 zoom range. This is helped by what must be a larger than average exit pupil diameter as the image hardly seems to have a visible edge where it meets the scope body.

Windage and elevation move with a positive click and when checked on the bore sighter they move the cross hair and seem to track accurately.

Compared to the modern 'budget' scopes, it's in a different league.