curious that seller has very little sales and nothing similar (lenses, etc) or of this magnitude. if money were no object, this would have to be an in-person sale for me..
Apparently they decided the lens would be of more value to them once converted to liquid form. That really applies to anybody's equipment having significant net resale value. If you could sell it at any time, then the choice to keep it means choosing to forgo that potential increase in liquid assets, or potential to purchase other equipment that may be much more useful.
Also of historical interest is the
rangefinder version. Interestingly, for the sample shown the filter ring says "100cm" while the plaque on the case says "1000mm".
Both versions are old and very specialized pieces of equipment that, from a user standpoint, would be very difficult to justify purchasing or retaining. They're probably much less capable than commercially available catadioptric telescopes and refractive lenses of recent technology and manufacture. So the collectors can fight over them. I think you would get better results (and no back strain) with a 500 PF and cropping 50% linearly, at just 1/9 the cost.
I'll speculate that with a simple formula for the refractive component (3/2), and old coatings (1959-65), either lens might perform adequately in UV depending on the nature of the cemented element. I don't plan on finding out, though...
