Curious as to if any of you have a preferred brand or model loupe magnifier you use when taking closer looks at your coins. Now that I'm slowly starting to have my collection grow, I would like one of these tools to analyze my coins in further detail.
I'm such a senex caecilius (old blind man) that I take off my glasses and hold the coin about 4 inches from my eyes and I can see in great detail.
Bausch and Lomb Hastings triplet 7x and 10x. Both are quite excellent for viewing coins - the 7x for a large field and the 10x for getting into the nooks and crannies.
Actually, my preferred loupe is a cheap little 6x plastic thing that I picked up at a coin show many years ago for around $4. It's cracked, and the plastic lens keeps falling out, but when trying to discern details or decode inscriptions, it seems to work better than the professional-grade 10x and 16x metal loupes that I use for examining rock specimens in the field.
I got a 10x loupe for $1. One of the best purchases I ever made. I don't use it for ancient coins, but I'm sure it would work fine for those too.
I've been using the same 16x swivel-fold hand loupe for over 25 years. It appears to be steel and glass, and is stamped ANCO / 16x on one side, and JAPAN on the other. I use it to tell me whether the coin needs a REALLY close look (e.g mechanical cleaning) and if so I have an illuminated microscope for that.
I've used this RuPer triplet for many years. Very flexible: you can get 3x, 4x, 5x, 7x, 9x, and 12x magnification.
This comes up here every so often giving me an opportunity to suggest my favorite $1 (from Dollar Tree) stereoscopic (3D) coin viewing system. I need to use them over my regular glasses because I have bad astigmatism. You want the strongest diopter lenses in reading glasses that you can use and still converge both eyes at that distance. That will be different depending on each person's eyes but mine are +3.5 which is the strongest Dollar Tree sells for one dollar. You can pay more if you wish. Being able to see close using 3D vision does make a difference if you have normal vision in both eyes. A real stereo microscope is better but is hard to carry to shows.
Bausch & Lomb 7x Triplet Loupe... with added lanyard. This is good for my needs... Got it for $25 delivered. I REALLY like your Ruper triple lens loupe @Severus Alexander !
I use a 16X Harris loupe my wife got me for Christmas a couple years back. I prefer to uses glasses and both eyes like doug, I have a pair of dollar store 2X readers and then I have these crazy things... These are old school glasses from the 60's or 70's, I think they were given to cataract surgery patients post-op, something like that. You can see the two lenses, the larger one is about 4X and the smaller lower one is 8x. Of course, when you wear them you look like Bubbles from the Trailer Park Boys.
