WWII aiming circle

scored this strange thing and just found out what it is, it's an aiming circle used in WWII.
the tripod is 3 feet tall and has brass bits and the aiming circle is a solid brass thing, nice and heavy.
it's painted green and i'd imagine polished up would look great.













so what to do with it?
seems to of been stored safely all this time, the dials ect all work like new, real smooth.
picked it up and thought it was a land survey tripod but being 70 years old and a war item, I think this would sell for a lot more then scrap brass, even the strap is in great condition considering the age.

Wow, that is very unique. I would definately stay away from scrapping it as I am sure it has more value than that. I would also stay away from cleaning/polishing it too much. Sometimes this can damage small, intricit pieces of the item such as the painted dials and numbers. I would start by looking into any war-memorabilia realted web sites and forums as a start. Again, very cool find.

I would'nt polish to hard, military collectors want there stuff in as original as possible.

SWEET!!!!! I wouldnt polish ANYTHING on it. Call the American Picker guys. They bought one similer on the show best i remember. Coulda been something different but I know items like that sell FAST around here. Ofcourse I live less then 3 miles from Fort Knox too. But that is awesome wish I could find stuff in that good of condition.

Thanks, yeah I wish I knew what it was when I picked it up, I might of looked a bit harder at the things in the pile.
generally if it doesn't normally have a cord attached i'm not paying attention, i'd imagine this was kept by the original owner and they've passed on so was tossed in the hard rubbish.

yeah nah, I won't be polishing it up, think i'll put it up on ebay and see what happens, would be cool to get this into a collection somewhere knowing it'll be kept preserved for years to come, but for an interior designer or something, polishing off the army green and bringing up the shiny brass would turn it into a real eye piece, and the tripod could be sanded back to clean timber and coated in clear varnish, would really be pretty and probably sell for more then it's value as a military collectable, them yuppies have deep pockets too.

yeah but if you clean it all off,then ya ruin it for the military market, cutting your possible market in half.it might appeal to some of the steampunk crowd.

What you have appears to be a WW2 'range finder' along with the matching tripod. Possibly American or English. It should say somewhere on the unit. Not sure of the value, but very collectible. I have a very similar range finder from WW2 that is a German (nazi) unit, which looks alot like yours. I would post a pic of mine but am not allowed, as yet.
Do NOT clean it, polish it, or try to sand and refinish the wood. You will ruin the value. The tripod is probably worth more than the optics, surprisingly, as fewer have survived.

Thanks, interesting about the tripod, the only one I found info on that was the same was one that was cut short so not original.

Here's an aiming circle that's almost identical to mine..
USA 16 - Aiming Circle M1

i agree with everyone above if you polish it or clean it any more then just wiping the dirt off it you will ruin any value it has, you could try ebay but you may want to try a gun shop alot of times, at least around here they buy millitary items or will know someone who does

well I gave it a go on ebay and it just sold for $300 so not bad hey?
definately gonna keep a lookout for military stuff in the future, when i picked it up
I though.. ooohh.. must be $8 worth of brass in this baby

eBay Australia: scrapper ben

Pretty nice profit. Now, aren't you glad you didn't scrap it?

Lend-Lease (Pub.L. 77-11, H.R. 1776, 55 Stat. 3034, enacted March 11, 1941)^[1] was the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, Free France, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939

A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $647 billion today) worth of supplies were shipped: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, and $1.6 billion to China. Reverse Lend-Lease comprised services such as rent on air bases that went to the U.S., and totaled $7.8 billion; of this, $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. The terms of the agreement provided that the material were to be used until time for their return or destruction. Supplies after the termination date were sold to Britain at a discount for £1.075 billion using long-term loans from the United States. Canada operated a similar program that sent $4.7 billion in supplies to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.^[2] The United States did not charge for aid supplied under this legislation.

Lend-Lease

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lend-Lease - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia