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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;longnine009, post: 32694, member: 1886&quot;]It depends on what your looking at and what your looking for. A contrasting answer to what&#039;s been said already is that&nbsp; I usually don&#039;t use anything because I&#039;m looking at&nbsp; military tokens which are usually simple, bland and&nbsp; circulated.&nbsp; But even with coins, IMO, you should start by looking&nbsp; with the naked eye. And at&nbsp; shows you might want to&nbsp; rock it a&nbsp; bit and see if it&#039;s flashing hair-lines.&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie9" alt=":eek:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> </p><p><br /></p><p>For just over-all grading&nbsp; a 4-x7 glass might work out pretty well especially for&nbsp; larger coins.&nbsp; A 7x loupe might be good for smaller coins.&nbsp; But if your paying some big bucks for say &quot;fully-split bands&quot; on a Merc a glass might not cut it.&nbsp; And you really do want to be sure the bands are fully split if your paying out the ying-yang for them. So you might need a loupe 7X, 10X or even 15X. It just depends on what works for you. There&#039;s really is no one size fits all answer for this; it&#039;s whatever works best for you. </p><p><br /></p><p>I use the pocket Acculab scale to weight tokens.&nbsp; But I only do that because it annoys me that references don&#039;t publish the weights. If a coin you weigh, *and measure* falls within tolerances, it does not necessarily mean it&#039;s authentic. Weighing and measuring is&nbsp; just a typical trouble shooting procedure--you begin with the simplest and work towards the hardest. A good struck counterfeit most likely will come up to tolerances. The slabbers, however, authenticate coins before they grade them.&nbsp; And it would seem that their authentication is actually something useful.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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