MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Saved from work in the skip a work all boxed and I got them all cleaned up and working with a bit of tender care lol but happy

Wow Rob,

You got a lot of quality microscopes there. The second one and possibly the fourth are polarizing scopes.

What a find. Polarizing too. We don't see any of the more recent Watson stuff over here in N.A. Very well made microscopes, which was probably their down fall.There is more than one company that failed because they refused to cheapen their products, in the face of competition from companies making barely acceptable junk, in countries with cut throat labour regulations and disgusting human rights policies.
Almost unbelievable what gets into dumpsters.
I had a Spencer # 5 low focus research stand for many years. It only lacked the achromatic condenser and carrier, which had a fine focus and aux. lens capacity. The carrier was unique to the #5, so there were probably very few of them ever made. After about 6 years or so of no luck, one showed up on ebay for 30.00, complete, and was only about 5 miles from where I spent a couple of days in Toronto, every week. It was being sold by a guy that looked exactly like Keith Moon, and the reason why ,I found out, was he played drums in a WHO tribute band but actually made his living selling stuff he acquired as a dumpster diver. He really didn't know what it was he was selling , aside from the fact that it was a microscope condenser.

A wonderful collection!

Grats on snagging all those scopes Bugone!

It is amazing what companies can throw away. A friend and I made over $10,000 selling machine tool parts on ebay that were just trashed where he worked. (That was during a time that USPS had unlimited weight flat rate boxes!)