Your question really opens a up a huge range of opportunities given the high quality short to medium teles that are still available from manual focus film camera days. In a way it comes down to preferences (focal length/ brand) and budget. Nikkor lenses are generally excellent but tend to be somewhat more pricey (and a bit weightier) than some alternatives. If you are thinking in this direction and want to go to a short tele I suggest considering the 85mm f1.8 and 105mm f2.5, both being excellent lenses. These are more or less reasonably priced given the huge number of them out there and offer high performance for dollar.
If you really want to go cheaper though, two alternatives come instantly to mind.
Old Pentax Takumar/ Super Takumar/SMC Takumar screw mount lenses are also excellent (perhaps not quite in the same league as Nikon but very close) and generally somewhat cheaper. Pentax made a 105mm f2.8 which is also brilliant and of course their 135mm lenses are cheap as chips given that they were one of the main focal lengths used in that era.
The other lens marque I can recommend are old Canon FL mount lenses. Built like the proverbial brick outhouses these lenses have superb optical character and also tend to go for a lot less than Nikkors. For some reason they are still over looked a bit. I have a preference for the FL lenses over the FD lenses due to their bullet proof build. Again you can find very reasonably priced 85mm and 135mm lenses from this maker. And of course if you are happy to do so 50mm lenses are available quite cheaply from all manufacturers. I have been in this camera game for over 20 years so by now I have quite a selection of lenses and such. So when a micro four thirds camera came into my life I bought adapters for all of the above marques plus Leica M mount and enjoy using them.
If you like a longer rather than wider lens I think you are in luck - its truly difficult to find lenses in the 50 -135mm range from major manufacturers that are not truly excellent. (I share this preference with you).
You will often find good discussions of suitable lenses here.
http://forum.mflenses.com/manual-focus-lenses-f3.html but there is a bit of a European bias as this is where most members seem to be from. So you tend to get quite abit of discussion about old Zeiss lenses, Russian lenses etc although I have noticed more are buying Japanese lenses over the past few years - I assume because of eBay.
One other thing about adapters. I have never really paid more than about $50 for an adapter. Often much less. You can pay up to $200 or even more. Sometimes the cheap Chinese ones can be problematic but usually not. And if they are for some reason a problem, I have never yet had an ebay seller not replace the item. As a result I tend not to buy the expensive adapters unless perhaps I am looking for special features like a focus confirmation chip (which I am not sure work all that well anyway) or auto focus.