Scan O 'Matic Coin Magnifier

Thanks for that! Been around a long time but don't remember this at all.

Dunroven, Thanks for sharing your story. I'm sorry to hear about your Dad, and I hope you save and preserve that model and share what it meant to young (and old) collectors.

Duke

Resurrecting this ancient thread because I just found one of these on ebay and decided to take a chance. My grandfather used to have one and he would loan it to me to search rolls and bags of coins back in the 1960's. It's not something you would use on valuable coins, but for searching lots of circulated coins it's a pretty neat little gadget. Amazingly, the bulb still works. I'm hoping I can find an LED bulb that will work with this and have a few on the way to try. Wish me luck. The main negative is that even with a small 7 watt bulb it gives off a surprising amount of heat. I expect the old bulb won't last very long. It's probably 55-60 years old! The other negative is you have to be looking down.

I don't suppose anyone knows of anything more modern that does the same job? LED lighting, a bigger coin hopper, stronger magnification, and an adjustable viewing screen would be on my wish list. I may have to see if I can jerry rig something with my USB scope.

Great memories, I wonder what happened to mine from 50 years ago?

Just an update. I found that LED night light bulbs will fit this little contraption nicely. That takes care of the heat and old bulb issue. I also found that I can take the magnifying bubble out, drop my usb scope in its place, and have a great way to zoom through rolls and rolls of coins very quickly, checking for varieties and errors. Anything interesting gets set aside for a closer look, but this little set-up really speeds things along.

Fantastic work!

Very cool, Roller42! Looks like something I would do. I am all about mixing and matching items to get the most out of them. I have taken old scope bases that worked great and then attached newer, better scopes that had crappy bases.