I've purchased cheap scopes and some decent scopes. Nothing like Leupold or Smit & Bender, but decent. Best is probably the Athlon 6-24 FFP. I'll second bjzjlz's opinion that purchasing a good scope makes the whole experience better. The cheapest scope purchased recently was a BSA 6-24x40. Bought it for experimentation at $60 a few years ago. Glad I didn't spend more. Kinda Usable up to about 16x then absolutely useless. Would have been better off buying a nice 4-14 that actually worked at 14x.
If I remember correctly, the Athlon was about $325, but worth every penny as it's usable all the way to 24X. brighter (bigger objective lens) and better glass all the way through.
And, even though using the bullseye mount, I'd make sure it was a springer rated scope no matter what. Getting bounced back and forth like that can still damage a scope over time.
Sometimes you can get lucky with less expensive scopes, as I did with a BSA 4-14 for under $200, but I also looked for something like 3 months to find the deal. Perhaps not worth the work. All I can say is make sure it's Springer Rated, has a good guarantee like Lifetime, and be willing to spend some $$ to get it.
Good luck
I agree. It takes skill, patience, etc to be a good shooter, but if the scope is junk (or anything else), then there you can only be as good as the tolerances of the equipment.
One glaring rub on that logic is the scope that I have on my .17 HMR. It is a CenterPoint 4-16x44. It has been fixed on that rifle for 11 years. It has held zero for 11 years and it is a tack-driver, Call it a fluke, but to this day I can send rounds downrange at 100 yards and stack bullets on top of each other with it within 1/4" MOA.
That said, I would never buy a CenterPoint scope again. What I have on my rimfire .17 HMR works very well, but I think I got lucky with it (and I was probably a bit naive at the time that I purchased it). The CP that came with my latest air rifle... I never even took it out of the bubble-wrap, I already had a different scope ready for mounting, also a "cheaper" brand that I have since returned due to a nasty focus issue between the crosshairs and the parallax, as well as a focus ring that was one of the loosest things that I have ever handled besides my ex-wife. The shame of it is, it actually had some decent glass in it, but the mechanics of it were junk. I eventually took the CP out of it's bubble-wrap only to find that the crosshairs were canted to the right from the factory. Oh joy.
I do find this somewhat entertaining though for the following reasons: When I was a kid, I had a Crosman Pumpmaster that I abused... bad. Keep in mind that I was only 10 years old, but one day when I found surface-rust on the barrel, I found out quickly that coarse steel wool and blueing don't mix. Then the seals gave out, etc. After the age of 17 and joining the military, I got to play with some fine firearms, and I thought the days of airguns were in my past. Fast-forward 22 more years, and my arsenal had only consisted of centerfire and rimfire weapons until 2 months ago.
I feel like I have been living under a rock. So much has changed in the world of air rifles and optics in the last few decades that I was obviously unaware of until now. I have learned more about modern-day airguns and optics in the last two months than I ever knew in my previous 38 years. And the more I learn, the more I am finding myself turning my nose up to cheap optics, and cheap pellets, etc. Just in the last 2 months, I have learned that I'll gladly spend 2X or 3X on a tin of quality-made pellets in the interest of accuracy and consistency before I will settle on wasting my time with a $5 tin of scrap lead.
And now, I find myself all-in on catching "the bug" when it comes to air rifles and optics. The cheap alternatives for optics are quickly sailing into the rear-view mirror for me. What's exciting to me is just how many "new" companies these days are making superb scopes with product lines that dip down into relatively affordable prices with quality construction. I am not the type that can just go out and buy whatever I want all the time. But over the next year or two, I don't find it unreasonable to think that I will probably own at least one or more of offerings from Athlon, Hawke, Vortex, Discovery (one ordered on it's way right now), Nikon (already own one), Bushnell (already own one), Aztec, etc.
Opinions may vary, but my opinion is that capitalism and competition is a good thing. There are so many companies these days making quality optics at numerous price-points, that there is seemingly "something for everyone" in their offerings. I was naive to some of these "newer" brands until recently, and I can easily see how an uninformed buyer can look at a "no-name" poorly constructed scope on Amazon and think it is a good deal because it has a rating above 4 and it has 1000 reviews... but that doesn't mean it is worth it. Spending $50 on a sketchy (insert weird name here) scope, and spending $100 on a quality offering from one of the companies (and others) that I mentioned above is a night-and-day difference. The quality shows in the details of construction that the average buyer may never think of until the cheap stuff fails and they aren't sure why.
My eyes have been opened.
