Re: microscopes for sale at flea markets and garage sales...

"justbeats" <steve_beats@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On 19 Sep, 16:50, "Y" <a...@xxx> wrote:
"justbeats" <steve_be...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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On 19 Sep, 01:50, "mc" <l...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm afraid this is exactly the sort of toy I keep telling people
not
to buy - at any price.
It is rubbish, I regret to say.

Of course it's rubbish and I wouldn't advice anyone to buy it.

But those are also the kind of microscopes I did my first
discoveries
with,
some 40 years ago.

Me, too!

I scour car-boot sales for microscopes; even toy ones! The reason is
that they are often sold along with a slide collection of much higher
quality. I've secured many famous-name Victorian mounts for mere
pennies each via this route. The scope is just tossed in the bin.

That brings another question to mind: I see on Ebay.co.uk that people are
wiling to pay a lot of money for slides, even from obscure or unknown
mounters. As far as I can tell, the major point of attraction is that the
sections involved are rather large (let's say 1cm * 1,5cm) and from well
known specimens. A slide containing a longitudal section of a dandelion
flower, stained with nuclear fast red and anilin blue, mounter unknown,
went
for more than 6 British pounds. There were several bidders. As that is an
unproblematic specimen I'm thinking of making a few hundreds of those
slides
and selling them in Britain to sponsor my lab...- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

£6 ain't bad if you divide it over a couple of hours "viewing
pleasure". And then you can sell it on to recoup most of your costs.
Make a profit if you're an astute buyer.

Old (i.e. pre 1960) slides sell for a lot more than modern ones. Seems
folks are only willing to pay big money for age and the actual labour
that went into making a slide. Complex diatom mounts from well known
Victorian mounters often approach £200.

Could you knock up a few hundred of those instead ;-)

That's not my cup of tea, I'm afraid... Diatom mounts... I'm getting nervous
thinking of it :-))).


.

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