doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com German scope question

I bought an 03-a3 that was nicely redone into a hunting rifle for a decent price, the drawing point was the scope and mount,
a German scope on a G&H sidemount. It is a Nickel Supra 4x81
with some sort of a magnifier/shape on the front. Here are some pictures





Does anyone here know much about these or could point me in a direction to find out more information.

Thanks

Is there a name or number on the front lens cap? Nice old G&H windage mounts are getting hard to find.

no, unfortunately there are no lens caps, the tube of the scope is steel, and the shape and knurled rings at the front are alloy

Nickel Supra Scopes were imported by Ted Tonkin of Continental Arms beginning in 1953. Nickel was an engineer at Zeiss Jena plant during WWII. Nickel's scope was basically a copy of the Zeiss engineered scopes, with Nickel's improvements. Tubes were weatherproof and used 1/2 minute clicks.
Crosshairs were choices of crosswire, post and crosswire, post and crossbar, tapered post, or 3" dot reticles.
The last Nickels scopes were imported in 1974. All Nickels scopes were very high quality, and extremely well made.
The adapter on your scope looks like those built by Litschert, but without a name on it I can't tell you much about it. The old Nickels flyers I have don't show such an adapter available.

Vall, did anyone BUT Litchert make scope adapters? Edwards maybe?

I took another look at the adapter and I think it must have been manufactured by Nickel, it consists of two portions, a blued steel portion and an anodized alloy portion. The blued portion perfectly matches the blueing on the body of the scope. Furthermore when the adapter is removed, there is no, lens in the front of the scope.

From what I was lead to believe about the original owner, he was stationed in Germany after WWII and may have purchased the scope while there. This may not have been a model that was imported into the US. The scope has no internal windage adjustment, the windage adjustment is on the G&H mont.

I believe this is true of all power increase objective lens adaptors, certainly it's been true of the few I've owned, all were Litscherts BTW. Regards, Joe

Had a Litschertized 330 Weaver ages ago, the Weaver objective had been removed. When I sold it on a rifle I could not find the Weaver lens, the buyer did not care. Then maybe ten years ago I saw it in the scope parts box, but it is not there now.

Yes! Edwards did also, as did Fecker and Leupold too!
Joe is correct. None of the adapters I've seen or own have an objective lense when the adapter is removed. I've got several Litscherts mounted on old Weaver tubes. The Spot Shot and VarmintMaster were pretty big improvements over std. Weavers, and the best part was the ability to keep the scope very close to the barrel's bore.

That 330 was probably worth more without the Litschert, considering what stock 330's are getting today! Of course every one of them was originally on a '03 Springfield sniper rifle! At least that's what all the sellers tell me!