So I had a gun listed on gunbroker and a local member offered me a pair of PVS-15A's as a possible trade. I'm looking to trade about $2300 in guns/accessories plus no more than $2K cash. He did also offer a chance to test drive em.

That said, I haven't found many details about 15A's.

These are a Litton unit with S/N X13114. No spec sheets, but what kind of performance should I be expecting? Roughly how old would these be?

A few things to consider:

The only way to get an idea of what performance to expect is to open it up and see what the tubes are.

The PVS-15 is an outdated goggle. There are much better articulating goggles available.

If you haven't used night vision before, or used/seen different tubes of varying quality, it will be hard for you to determine how good the tubes are. Even poor quality gen 3 will look amazing to most new users which is a double edged sword for them. It'll be awesome as a newbie but if you continue on with the hobby you may regret it later.

With all that said, depending on the trade details, condition & quality of the housing/optics/tubes, it could also be a good trade. At the minimum I'd want to know what the tubes are since they are the heart of the system.

ETA: you might be able to look into the rear eyepieces and read the tube info. It’s worth a shot.

Good to know, thanks. I have a PVS-14 with Omni VII tube, so I have some idea of a baseline. I'll see if I can get those details.

I added on to my reply. You might be able to look into the eyepieces and read the tube info. It’s worth a shot before opening it up, which if they are still collimated, would throw it off, but there is any easy way to DIY them back.

Taking off the eyepieces isn’t difficult but at the same time if somebody doesn’t know what they are doing they could jack it up.

Cool, I might meet the guy tonight or tomorrow to see if I can do that, or get an idea how they stack up against my 14.

If the tubes look good and the housing/optics are in good shape meaning you don’t need to replace parts, then $4,300 value ($2k or less cash) sounds like a pretty good deal. I’ve never used -15s but the optics are supposed to be pretty awesome. I should add, I’d avoid any sketchy origins. I don’t know if that’s really a problem these days with -15s but I’m sure they’re still being used by some organizations.

Being a litton unit, that’s a pretty early M953. You are likely looking at Litton M890s from the late 1990s (2001 at the very newest). Likely Omni IV/V performance, may or may not be gated. That’s if the tubes are original

I was told they came from snipershide, so basically kind of like our EE. I'm seeing if I can locate the original ad. Otherwise I'd say the trail is cold. Assuming L3 (since they acquired Litton from my understanding) is open to inquiries, I can give them the SN and find out.


Thanks for that info. I'm told they are autogated.

15’s are a dead platform with no support from the parent company. Parts are slim to none and expensive since they are finite and running out.

As long as they don’t break then it’s a ok deal but if you ever break them, you could be looking at a sum of money.

Unless it had really really nice tubes in it then for that price I’d pass. I’ve wanted a set for a while but when it comes to 15’s I’ll only consider it a deal worth considering if it’s $500 on top what the tubes are worth.

Yeah, considering that I think realistically I'm only going to offer $1500-1600 and my trade (a DBAL A3 + Omega UMP 9mm) tops, if they look to be in good shape and I can ascertain that CID/NCIS won't show up to redistribute them.

For "budget" duals, I'm seeing dual bridged 14 setups for not much more than what this might be worth. Though ideally my plain is to wait for Night Goggles to open up orders for RNVGs or DTNVGs again.