Best Loupe For Penny Errors

Mine says DOUBLET 16X. Works fine for me,I have two.

I have a folding lens used in the textile industry. It is a 2 element lens with the glasses about 30 mm diameter. The lenses are separared at their closest point on the centerline by about 1mm.

Very useful. It has a depth of field of more than 3/4 of an inch. Made in Japan, well before WW2. It is possible to have the lens stand off the coin at up to 2" distance, to allow a strong light to fall on the surface of the coin. The huge depth of field allows for the lens to be held at a large angle to the surface of the coin, and still have all of the coin in focus. About 10x magnification.

I also have a 25x gem examination lens. Very narrow depth of field with 4 lenses in two groups. Lenses about 12mm diameter. Very hard to use, requires lots of practice. It was constructed that way to examine the internal flaws in a cut gemstone that may be no nore than 1mm in diameter. Useful in numismatics to examine such things as altered dates and mint marks, edge milling and Machine Doubling.

Soon, I will be getting a new computer and a camera suitable for coin photography. This should almost eliminate my need for the gem examination lens.

I use a 16X doublet and can see darn near everything even if most of its MD. Proper Lighting seems to be the biggest issue and makes me think I see things that arent there.

Does anyone have a 14x Hastings triplet they use?