I have been in the market for a parallax adjustable variable mag scope with a budget in the £60 region for a while now.
The plan was to find a fairly light, no frills scope for use on an HW95 mainly for hunting.
Looking through all the usual suspects in the ad's it seemed that with a lot of them in this price range you were paying for mildot or IR and I wanted my money to go on the optics in preference to extra's.

I started air gunning properly in the early 90's and my first "proper" scope was an Apollo 5* 3-9x40 WA PX.
I loved that scope but it went a long time ago when I traded my 2nd 77 in for a Titan Mohawk.(I soon went back to another 77 though but that’s another story)
With a certain sense of nostalgia then, I decided I wanted to return to an "old fashioned" 3-9x40 WA PX scope with decent optics.

Looking at the JSR advert I noticed that Ed had the Nikko Platinum 3-9x40 WA PX scopes on at £59.95.
I remembered these scopes from the mid 90's and dug out an article by Nick Jenkinson in an old copy of AGW which was lurking in the loft.
This confirmed that the Nikko had fully coated lenses and excellent optics. It's also worth noting that in 1995 these scopes retailed at the 96 quid mark.

I wavered for a moment and nearly went for the Bushnell Sportsman 4-12x40 but in the end stuck with my first choice and sent Ed payment for the Nikko.

When it arrived I was immediately struck by just how red the objective lens actually is - it really looks superb in my opinion.
Turrets are the low profile type, easily adjusted by fingers rather than coin slots.
Looking through the scope was a pleasant surprise, the image is crystal clear and very bright all through the range with a nice 30/30 reticule.
The zoom collar is reasonably stiff but smooth which is a good sign, and the same can be said of the parallax adjustment collar on the objective lens which has the distances clearly marked in both yards and meters.

Optically I would say this scope is easily on a par with my old Jap Tasco AG 2-7x32, another scope I wish I had hung onto.

So overall I'm very pleased with my purchase - it suits my requirements well and I think it was a bit of a bargain.