Why are binoviewers so expensive?

I would like to get some, but I don't want to pay so much for them. They cost more than I payed for my telescope or my binoculars. What is it that makes them so pricey?

They are still considered as sort of a "specialty" item by the vast majority of people who have only experienced "cyclops" mode, so the market isn't very big, and the economic laws of supply and demand rule.

Think about binoculars. Literally millions of people own and use binoculars, yet you'll still have to pay $300-$400 or more to get a really decent pair (depending on your definition of "decent"). Only a few thousand people own and seek binoviewers. And they require just as tight or tighter tolerances and engineering challenges than binoculars, which make them expensive to design and fabricate. I guess it's sort of a chicken-and-egg thing, if there was more demand for binoviewers, the price would come down as more manufacturers saw the opportunity to make money. But there won't be a larger demand for binoviewers, until the price comes down...

Those of us who now have the "true religion" must "share the faith" with the "unconverted"! I know I will never (willingly) go back to using one eye, at least not for very long.

I think it is because of the quality of glass inside the binoviewer. I'm just guessing here, but maybe my meandering will stir up a bit more on the subject.

Binoculars are different beasts than binoviewers. Never heard of a pair of 400x binoculars, yet that is how I operate my binoviewers on a regular basis. I also operate my binoviewers down to 17x with a 3 deg TFOV in my ST80. That is one huge dynamic range. Most of the binoculars I've met are fixed magnification. There are a few that are not. Bill Burgess sells a pair of 25x100 binoculars that I think take regular ep's. Not sure if anyone's tried them at 400x.

Anyway, the glass inside a binoviewer is expensive (2 prisms and a light pipe I think), the machining to make it all fit in a little, itty bitty housing is not cheap. The ep holders are proprietary. On top of all that, there are probably less than 1,000 or so sold each year.

Standing by for signals,

Tom

Because the beam spliter inside. That's a prism that splits the light beam in two. Al Negler told me, in his Tv binoviewr it cost over $400 to buy it hole sale. Larger the beam spliter, the more expensive.
Microscopes has smaller beam splitter, cheaper, that's why there is less light through put. I own one, converted from a microscope, it's OK for planets, but not DSO-s.