Loupe For Beginner

Everyone has there preference and to each his own. But I have to respectfully disagree.. I bought a Bausch & Lomb Hastings 10x for myself last May, and this past Christmas I bought my friend one of the no name 10x loupes for $2.99 including shipping and its identical in every way.

I ended up buying one of the cheap ones for myself as well and I have used both many many times and I really see no difference at all in quality of my vision, magnification or anything really. If I couldn't tell by feel which one I was holding I wouldn't even notice the difference just by looking through each. I really feel your paying a premium for the name, but will get equal performance out of the no name version.

A loupe is a piece of metal, two screws and a lens, the quality of the construction and the lens can't be that different/better for $3 VS $20+... I wish I had only bought one of the cheap ones for myself and put the remaining money towards a coin or something. The 10x is $2.99 free shipping or you can get a 10x, 15x and 30x for $7 and change.. And still have money left over towards a coin. But again, everyone has there own opinions.

This site will give you quite a selection of inexpensive loupes. I bought #23 a couple of years ago. Use it on a daily basis and it it still going strong.

http://dx.com/s/Loupe

Start out with a 10x doublet,should be under $8. If you get into errors/varieties then get a 14x doublet,around $10. If you decide to stay in the hobby,and how could you not then get a hasting Triplet. And don't forget about getting a good light source too.
John1

I bought one of these. After I got it, I bought 5 more simple because they were so cheap. They're cheaper than the batteries they use! Best I've ever used. Nice light source. Spot on.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_s...%2Caps%2C360




I picked up one of these and a set (10x 20x 30x). Total spent about $10 free shipping.

I've used a Bausch & Lomb 7x APO Triplet for many years (on my second one, as I wore out the housing and hinge, the old glass is still good though) as my main glass, a 10x I find is too much power for most of the coins I collect. A 10x is needed though for RPD's DDO's, and other varieties. Get the best Apochromatic (means no false color and the edges of the loupe should be fairly flat with little too no distortion. B&L is trusted stuff, and it still doesn't cost much over cheaply made chinese magnifiers. For close ups now I use a cheap Celestron USB microscope - easier to see on my monitor after snapping a shot of the variety area I'm looking at on a coin.

Well you get what you pay for in optics! Besides even at $30-40 for a top quality B&L Loupe or similar, one could always sell it on ebay to recoup most of their money if they find it not being used much. Cheap loupes will never bring much interest used in a sale. That said I'm a retired photographer, and in that business line great optics are everything, now I do astrophotography (besides coins) and the same also applies.

Apochromatic lenses are suberb and best results with them come in a triplet design.

Amazing that in over 300 years Issac Newton's laws of optics haven't been improved on much, besides quality of glass and coatings! One amazing guy in our human history.

A 10x triplet corrected loupe is really all you need. It serves me fine and I use it for work with things smaller than coins where detail is very important. I also have a 3x table loupe (stands on its own) for just super quick glances.

What are corrected lenses? Take a piece of grid paper and place it under the loupe. If the grid looks normal and flat then they are corrected lenses, if not the grid appear round, bent, distorted. The magnification from uncorrected lenses is like a pseudo-effect.

^ Did you know that Newton was a top-dog at the Royal British Mint?