FWIW, my early 1950's Bauch & Lomb Balscope has worked fine for me for many decades for everything from range work to long range hunting. Still does even with old eyes. It has a 35X eyepiece if I remember right. Also have an early super heavy duty B&L tripod to use it on, but even collapsed it's too high to put on a bench - so just gets set up beside it. These old scopes have exceptional glass, and can be found for sale for quite reasonable prices.
As Richard said, target choice is a factor with rimfires, especially the 17's. So I've made my own targets on the computer for decades that are matched to the range, caliber and type of sights for ever firearm I have owned. I have/had 17 caliber rigs that will shoot small ragged one hole groups at 100 yards, and seeing them clearly is not a problem well past 100 for me with this spotting scope.