Pick a telescope and see the lowest current prices on eBay, where a hobby with a steep learning curve puts a lot of barely-used equipment back on the market every spring. Prices are pulled live, so what you see is what sellers are asking this minute.
Live from eBayAperture is the spec, and it is the one nobody markets. The number that decides what you can see is the width of the main lens or mirror, not the magnification printed on the box. A 130mm reflector gathers roughly three times the light of a 70mm refractor, and no eyepiece can make up the difference. Any advert leading with "675x power" is selling to someone who does not know that yet. The model numbers here mostly encode it: an AstroMaster 130EQ is 130mm, a Skymax 127 is 127mm.
The mount matters as much as the tube. A sharp telescope on a mount that shakes for four seconds after you touch the focuser is not a usable telescope. Buying used is the one time you can get a serious mount cheaply, because they outlive their owners' interest, and it is worth asking the seller to nudge the tube on video and show you how quickly the view settles.
Check the mirror coatings on anything old. A reflector's mirror can be recoated but it costs a good fraction of what these sell for, so look for a photo straight down the tube. Dust is fine and normal. A mirror that looks cloudy, blotchy or has patches where the coating has lifted is a repair bill rather than a bargain.
Computerised scopes fail in specific, checkable ways. Ask whether it completes a star alignment, whether the hand controller is present, and whether the motors run in both axes without grinding. A NexStar that will not align is a dobsonian you have to lift. The good news is these are mature designs with parts around, so a working one from ten years ago works exactly as it did.
Eyepieces are the hidden second purchase. The ones bundled with budget scopes are usually the cheapest part of the package, and the upgrade is where the next couple of hundred dollars goes. When you compare two listings, count what is in the box: a scope arriving with three good eyepieces and a decent diagonal can be better value than a bare tube at half the price.
Big scopes get sold because they are big. The most common reason a large instrument comes up cheap is that its owner stopped carrying it outside. Be honest about where you will store it and how far you will move it, because the telescope you actually use beats the one with the bigger mirror every clear night.
Live eBay listings. Pick a model and it fetches the current lowest-priced listings in real time, with the listing shown next to each price, so nothing here is an estimate.
Aperture, the width of the main lens or mirror in millimetres. It decides how much light the telescope collects and therefore what you can actually see. Magnification is set by the eyepiece and can be changed for a few dollars, so a listing that leads with a power figure is selling the wrong number.
Safer than most used optics, because the expensive parts have no wear items. Glass and mirrors last decades. The things that do fail are motor drives, hand controllers and mirror coatings, and all three can be checked with a question and a photograph before you bid.
A reflector gives the most aperture per dollar and needs occasional collimation. A refractor needs no alignment and is the easiest to live with, but costs far more for the same aperture. A Maksutov or Schmidt-Cassegrain folds a long focal length into a short tube, which is why the NexStar and LX200 families are the popular computerised choice.
The diagonal, the finder and the good eyepieces, in that order, along with the hand controller on computerised models. None of them are catastrophic but together they are worth more than most people expect, so count what is in the box before comparing two prices.
The mount, almost always. A modest tube on a steady mount shows more than a large tube on a shaky one, because at useful magnifications every vibration is magnified too. This is the main thing the secondhand market lets you fix cheaply.
A daily snapshot of the lowest genuine eBay price for every model we track, and how good that price is right now versus its usual level, updated automatically. Prices last refreshed 7 August 2026. Tap a price to see that model's cheapest listings on eBay, or tap a model name for the full live list here.
Under each model is the actual listing that price came from, so you can see whether it is the thing you want or a bundle, a variant, or an accessory that happens to share the name.
| Model | Cheapest now | vs typical | This week |
|---|---|---|---|
Celestron FirstScope Celestron FirstScope Reflector Telescope Altazimuth Mounted Black | $30 | – | new |
Celestron Travel Scope 70 Celestron Travel Scope 70 5.71 Refractor Telescope | $40 | – | new |
Celestron AstroMaster 70AZ Celestron AstroMaster 70AZ LT Refractor Telescope w/ Tripod | $60 | – | new |
Celestron PowerSeeker 127EQ Celestron PowerSeeker 127EQ Telescope | $75 | – | new |
Celestron StarSense Explorer LT 80AZ Celestron StarSense Explorer LT 80AZ Smartphone App-Enabled StarSense telesco… | $100 | – | new |
Orion StarBlast 4.5 Orion Starblast 4.5 EQ Equatorial Reflector Telescope | $135 | – | new |
Celestron Inspire 100AZ Celestron 22403 Inspire 100AZ Refractor Telescope - New - $170 - Derry, NH | $150 | – | new |
Meade Infinity 102 MEADE INSTRUMENTS INFINITY 102 REFRACTOR TELESCOPE | $200 | – | new |
Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ (32046) Newtonian Telescope | $220 | – | new |
Celestron NexStar 130SLT Celestron NexStar 130SLT F/5 Computerized Newtonian Telescope | $237 | – | new |
Celestron AstroMaster 114EQ Celestron AstroMaster 114EQ 114mm f/8.8 Newtonian Reflector Telescope with Ge… | $279 | – | new |
Celestron NexStar 127SLT Celestron NexStar 127SLT 127mm Telescope Motorized Altazimuth Mount #22097 | $300 | – | new |
Sky-Watcher Heritage 130 Sky-Watcher Heritage 130 Tabletop Dobsonian (650mm f/5) | $305 | – | new |
Celestron NexStar 4SE Celestron NexStar 4SE 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain GoTo Telescope | $350 | – | new |
Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ Reflector Telescope | $350 | – | new |
Celestron NexStar 5SE Celestron NexStar 5SE Telescope | $460 | – | new |
Celestron NexStar 6SE Fully Loaded Celestron Nexstar 6se GOTO SCT with Starsense, GPS, WiFi, and Ca… | $585 | – | new |
Sky-Watcher Skymax 127 Sky-Watcher Skymax 127 Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope | $610 | – | new |
Celestron Omni XLT 120 Celestron Omni XLT 120 EQ Refractor Telescope w/ CG-4 Mount Tripod | $635 | – | new |
Meade LX200 Meade LX200 8” Telescope 203mm Double Fork Mount Motorized. | $900 | – | new |
Celestron NexStar 8SE Pickup: Celestron NexStar 8SE GoTo Telescope. Make an Offer. Canaan, NY. | $980 | – | new |
Meade LX90 Meade LX90 10” Schmidt Cassegrain telescope with tripod and wedge plus | $999 | – | new |
Celestron CPC 800 Celestron Cpc 800 XLT Telescope + Tripod | $1,400 | – | new |
Unistellar eVscope Unistellar eVscope eQuinox Digital Telescope Astronomy RARE | $2,370 | – | new |
Celestron NexStar Evolution 8 Celestron NexStar Evolution 8 203mm f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope with In… | $2,399 | – | new |