Something to think about!

[bwaites]

I have been watching this thread with great interest. I recognize that I am a bit of a "gear geek" and like high end equipment, even to the point that I was a relatively early Grendel adopter. Of the people on the board, I think BluntForceTrauma, LR1955, and stokesrj were the only ones who adopted before me. (Of course there may be others that I simply don't know are here, or don't know how early they jumped on board.)

I acknowledge that we tend to steer people to higher end, more expensive gear, but most of that is simply because we have come down the "cheaper to get by until I can afford better" and realize that in most cases we end up buying twice (or even more!) times using that rationale. When asked for advice, we try to convince people to not make the same mistake.

But I think it would be very useful to have a price scaled, quality equipment list. It would not be a "this is the best in this price category" but would serve as a starting point for research. I have found that things that I value very highly might not be critical to others. When it comes to scopes, the difference between a $1000 and a $2000 scope is significantly less than the difference between a $500 and $1000 scope. And the difference between a $2000 scope and $5000 scope is even less.

I would propose the following categories:

Scopes
Under $500
$500-1000
$1000-2000
$2000-3000
$3000-

Mounts
Under $100
$100-200
$200-400
$400-

Bipods
Under $100
$100-200
$200-

Those are starting points. We can modify as we go, then I will create stickies for each category if you so desire.

Once we've fixed on the categories, we will develop some criteria for evaluations.