Newbies and their microscopes :-) 1 1

[Rob’s Coins]

Let me start out by professing that I’m a relative newbie with a microscope.  I would like to educate the older guys how I got here… Right, Wrong, or indifferent 

1) I started at looking at some of my proof eagles under my wife’s biology microscope, man are they pristine!!!  Amazing!!!

2) (positive) started searching coins with a mag glass.   What a strain if doing it more than 10 min.  I can pop a coin on my cheap Amazon $50-$100 microscope and get an HD image of the whole coin. 
 

3) (negative) I see the DDR and DDO variety plus on NGS, figure you guys already found the easy ones, I’ll look for the 1968 D FS-008 variety that you guys with glasses missed.  You can’t tell me you would see that with 5x.  You may see a slightly wider E if you notice it and you are focused on what your doing, then you will need to a scope anyway.  Why would anyone want that anyway? Cause I don’t have any cool mistakes in my collection.

But like I’ve said, a lot of searching and never found anything so now heading back to pristine coins. 

Just such an interesting hobby.  I know you guys hate new guys with scopes but thought I would give my perspective since it seems you guys started collecting is an older generation and may not know how we got here.

[Henri Charriere]

🐓:  Welcome!  What a shock it is to read virtually heretical thoughts on this Forum! When I casually mentioned my use of an antique jeweler's 30-power loupe, I was roundly condemned, eviscerated, disemboweled and discarded by the professional crowd boasting 150 years of numismatic experience amongst them.

I saw things they've never seen: the perfectly formed incisions of V D B on the Lincoln cent.  One day I was trying to figure out why my old gold coin lost 3 points and was assessed as an MS67.  And there it was: a triangular pit barely visible to the naked eye which I later determined to be the result of an accidental collision between an otherwise gorgeous, lustrous coin with original mint luster and a surgical instrument which likely fell from an inattentive dentist's hand.  I tell you, though I was inculcated thoroughly with the standard grader's indispensable 5x-to-7x loupe, the magnification provided by the verboten one was beyond compare, opening up new vistas and revealing secrets I never knew existed. The sole drawback: totally useless when examining a pixelated photo. Who's to deny us our forbidden pleasures? 🤣

[VKurtB]

On 1/4/2024 at 9:12 PM, Henri Charriere said:

🐓:  Welcome!  What a shock it is to read virtually heretical thoughts on this Forum! When I casually mentioned my use of an antique jeweler's 30-power loupe, I was roundly condemned, eviscerated, disemboweled and discarded by the professional crowd boasting 150 years of numismatic experience amongst them.

I saw things they've never seen: the perfectly formed incisions of V D B on the Lincoln cent.  One day I was trying to figure out why my old gold coin lost 3 points and was assessed as an MS67.  And there it was: a triangular pit barely visible to the naked eye which I later determined to be the result of an accidental collision between an otherwise gorgeous, lustrous coin with original mint luster and a surgical instrument which likely fell from an inattentive dentist's hand.  I tell you, though I was inculcated thoroughly with the standard grader's indispensable 5x-to-7x loupe, the magnification provided by the verboten one was beyond compare, opening up new vistas and revealing secrets I never knew existed. The sole drawback: totally useless when examining a pixelated photo. Who's to deny us our forbidden pleasures? 🤣

Ah yes, pixelated digital photos. Yet somehow, what passed into history is the Kodachrome slide, the only example necessary to disprove “newer is better” for all time.

[Sandon]

    Most numismatic authorities do not believe that high levels of magnification should be used to examine coins, except for some authentication purposes. To be truly appreciated, each full side of a coin must be viewed as a whole. Otherwise, one can't see the forest for the trees!

    "With few exceptions, NGC will not attribute die varieties that require greater than 5x magnification to be clearly recognizable." What is a Variety? | NGC (ngccoin.com).  Similarly, the recently published Volume 2, Sixth Edition of the Cherrypickers Guide to Rare Die Varieties states as a "helpful hint" at p. 27, "If you can't discern a variety with a 7x loupe, it probably isn't significant enough to earn the attention of other collectors."   I like to look at coins at 10x myself and occasionally check details at 15x but have never found anything stronger to be necessary. We're looking at coins, after all, not microorganisms! 

   I use a digital microscope, usually propped up on a stack of books, to photograph entire sides of coins. I find a loupe much better to look at details, including the identification of die varieties.