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Originally Posted by acropolite
Thanks for posting Robert, some useful info there.
I've been looking around for a good second hand microscope for a while now, now I know what brands to look for.
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Phil,
There are a lot of secondhand microscopes on the market, but I get the impression that good numbers of them have copped a lot of abuse.
There are a number of companies that deal in reconditioned microscopes; so these people are a useful source of information as to which of the older models of microscopes are worth buying secondhand.
(There are are a lot of brands that made extremely high quality instruments, but who are no longer in business. There are also a number of brands like Swift who used to produce good instruments but who now produce very cheap instruments instead.)
In the olden days, Leica and Zeiss and Olympus and Nikon and Unitron instruments were
extremely expensive but they had an extremely good reputation; people do buy these brands secondhand.....but you would have to either understand the optics/mechanics of microscopes at a good level, or trust someone who has reconditioned one of these instruments, if you want to buy one and be reasonably sure of getting a good secondhand instrument.
I guess if a person is only going to spend $400 on an instrument, then it is probably OK to get one that is just fairly good, but if I was spending two or three times this amount, I would want to be sure that it was
very good.
cheers,
Robert