What are you planning on doing with it? And what sort of scope are you looking for? Long range accuracy or game hunting, or target? If you want something for longer ranges and very accurate I would be looking at spending a bit more money. You might get buy with 150, but that would be my bottom limit. You would want something with a higher magnafication and an adjustable objective like varvmint or target scope. With these kind of scopes you get what you pay for most of the time. Not that a cheaper scope cant' be accurate, they just don't have very good optics and are not real fun to look thru at high powers and longer distances.

If your talking about general hunting like dogs and deer or something at 100 yards then a typical 3-9 should work pretty well I would think.

I would look at stuff like Nikon, bushnell Trophy and above, simmons 44 mag, aetec or a whitetail expedition if you can find one and some of the others mentioned in this thread. If you can afford a leupold get one, they are nice scopes, but not worth the money in my opinion, especially the lower priced ones. Of course if get mad and beat it against a tree they will replace it. The service is second to none for sure.

Don't discount the cabela's stuff either. I own an alaskan guide scope and it is excellent. They are made by major manufactures for cabela's, but the sales people don't know which ones. You can sort of compare them with other models and guess though. Mine looks alot like a Nikon.

I would stay away from the combo deals, the scopes are crap most of the time. I wouldn't put one on a .22 let alone a .223. I would see if you could figure out what model of scope it comes with and look up the price. You never know, you might get lucky. Most I have seen are like 30-50 dollar bushnells. If that's all you can afford they will work though. I had a 50 dollar bushnell on my muzzle loader for a long time and it worked great. And years ago I had the same basic scope on a savage 30-06 with no problems. However compared to what you can get for a bit more money they are not worth it in optic quality to me.

Good luck,
Paul