What is your opinion of european optics: worth the extra cost and weight or not?
Simply put - NO. Don't get me wrong, european optics, generally speaking, can be better than the japanese and US optics, but definately not twice better, and thus not twice expensive.
Also keep this in mind. Workers in europe earn wages generally twice what US workers are paid. As such, a great deal of the double, or even triple, price tag of european scopes is because you are paying for their labor; and in european countries, the labor rates are high because they pay a much higher percentage of taxes for services, like medical, etc.
A high end swarovski or zeiss is two or three times more expensive than an Elite 4200, Nikon Monarch, and Leupold VXIII, but they are definately not two or three times better.
Zachary
