Tucked inside Vignettes, the eclectic antique store in Ocean Beach, San Diego, stands a coin-operated telescope that once belonged to the San Diego Zoo.
According to the signage posted by dealer Matt White, the telescope has been part of the zoo since the 1950s and was last stationed on the observation deck overlooking the panda exhibit. It is described as the last remaining old-school telescope from the zoo, with optics that are still surprisingly powerful.
The asking price is $995.The telescope is offered through Jet*Set Laboratories — “The Science of Swank!” — which is Matt White’s dealer brand at Vignettes. Matt is something of a resident mad genius in the store. His specialty is taking objects built for one purpose and reimagining them as something else entirely. He might gut a vintage television set and convert it into a cocktail bar, or strip out the old tube works and rebuild it around modern technology. The original form stays intact, but the function is transformed. It’s part salvage, part invention, and part showmanship.The zoo telescope fits right into that sensibility. It’s a piece of public infrastructure — the kind of thing thousands of kids pressed their eyes against on school field trips and family outings across five decades — now offered as a collectible conversation piece. If you grew up in San Diego, there’s a decent chance you looked through this very telescope.What makes an item like this interesting from a collector’s standpoint is the crossover appeal. It’s not just a piece of optical equipment. It’s a piece of civic memory, a physical artifact tied to one of the most visited zoos in the world. At under a thousand dollars, it’s the kind of thing that could anchor a room, a business lobby, or a private collection with a single object that tells a story all by itself.
