Magnifying Glass

Probably not a useful answer, but my favorite is the lens I took out of the short end of a pair of binoculars. It has high magnification, and it lets light in from the sides.

Useful answer: My second favorite is one of those pocket magnifiers that flips out of a vinyl cover. You have to be careful buying one of these though, because there are cheap ones with low magnification made out of plastic out there.

A 10X loupe is great for closeup magnification to spot double dies and such.

Large single element lenses, which are typical for magnifying glasses, are not really good enough for the examination of coins. Depending on the light source, they can suffer from colour aberration and distortion away from the centre line of the lens. In most cases, you can only use magnifying glasses with one eye.

Some collectors use a small hand held lens that has a battery light source built in.

For really close up examination, I use a folding 20x gem examination lens that is used normally used for the examination of internal flaws in gemstones. It has 3 elements in 2 groups to eliminate distortion and colour aberration. I would not normally recommend such an instrument for coins, because it has an extremely narrow depth of field, and is difficult to use for coin examination.

For general binocular viewing of your collection, and if you are fortunate enough to have good eyesight, or if your eyes have equally deteriorated short distance vision, a pair of cheap 3x ordinary reading glasses may be OK. If you have unequal focus accommodation for each eye, use of such cheap glasses is not OK.

In the case of unequal eye deterioration, the use a jeweler's loupe may be for you, for the close examination of minor detail on a coin with a single eye. My brother has even resorted to Aralditing a jeweler's loupe over a lens of a pair of old prescription glasses.

If you normally require glasses that have unequal correction for each eye, and you wish to review your collection with binocular vision, it may be worth investigating the possibility of simply wearing a pair of simple 3x reading glasses over your normal glasses. You may look a little eccentric, but I know of a few coin collectors who actually have employed this simple expedient. OK for use for short periods only.

Actually, I think most coin collectors are a trifle eccentric anyway. That includes myself!

i was at my doctors office the other day. they made the mistake of leaving me in the exam room for a long period of time. I got bored, had read all the magazines. so I started snooping around. [[stop saying ewwwww..every body does it]
i grabbed the light that they use to look in your ear with.
turned it on and grabbed a penny out of my pocket.
OH YEAH!! I gotta get one of these!!
i think it was 10x or higher.
i could count the hairs in Abe's ear

I'm off to google land to find one. 14x..nice!!!

post a picture of the attachment needed to put on table

I use an Optisight visor when CRH'ing to keep my hands free. I picked it up from my local woodworking store (but it's available from Amazon too) for fine detail work but it works great for coin examination. It has interchangeable lenses up to 5x, which is generally good enough for me.



Bonus: my wife can barely keep her hands off me when I wear it too. Yes, it's that sexy.

I can see that could have a sort of appeal!

i ordered this last night....have no idea if its any good or not....guess I will be a test subject

http://www.harborfreight.com/magnif...s-38896.html