Hello from the East San Francisco Bay Area!

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pendragn
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2024 10:30 pm
Location: Walnut Creek, CA, USA

Hello from the East San Francisco Bay Area!

Post by pendragn »

Hello all! My name is Nick and I am happy to join this group. I am just starting off on my microscopy endeavors from an estate sale where I picked up a couple of microscopes. I somehow found what I think is a pretty decent setup: Olympus BH2 with DPlan objectives and an Olympus Vanox with some normal SPlan as well as SPlan Phase Objectives and the DIC hardware. Got all of that for $300. I purchased the BH2 for $200 and they wanted $900 for the Vanox....but since no one was buying it, at the end of the estate sale I offered them $100 for it and they accepted (otherwise it would have been donated).

I do mechanical engineering and 3D printing for my job, so I have already fashioned a 3d printed Photomicro Adapter to allow my Sony camera to go on top...just designed and finished that yesterday.

The Vanox had a lot of frozen parts but I was able to disassemble it and got nice instrument grade grease from Amazon to re-lube everything, and everything now seems to be working well.

All I need to do now is to learn how to use the Phase contrast, how to use the DIC setup, what is Kohler illumination and how to tune the scope for it, determining if the Vanox is better than the BH2 (I think it is, but I know nothing), and how to take interesting pictures of things with my 11yo son also eager to participate .... a happy long list! :))

A link to an image gallery of the scopes: https://photos.app.goo.gl/usy59uB128khF2PF8

Beatsy
Posts: 2102
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Re: Hello from the East San Francisco Bay Area!

Post by Beatsy »

Hi Nick, welcome to the group.

All that for $300!!? Good grief. That's at least 20 Christmases rolled into one there. Both exceptional scopes, but particularly the Vanox with DIC. Congratulations!

Cheers
Beats

pendragn
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2024 10:30 pm
Location: Walnut Creek, CA, USA

Re: Hello from the East San Francisco Bay Area!

Post by pendragn »

Thank you! It wasn't as straightforward as that :)

The estate sale people wanted $600 for the BH2 and $1600 for the Vanox (but they admitted they did not know what they had and just went off of a guess from what they saw online). We haggled down the BH2 to $200 at the first estate sale, but they would not move on the Vanox (even on the last day when everything was 50% off, making the Vanox $800). They took the Vanox to another estate sale, and even after three days, no one bought it. Right near the end of the sale I said I would give them $100 for it, which is better than them donating it for no money...they accepted.

It was a great life lesson for my 11yo son who was with me: There were hundreds of people going through those two estate sales. I saw a room full of Christmas ornaments sell out. I saw various mixing bowls and kitchen tools selling. I told my son: Be the type of person who buys the microscope...or the beautifully engineered tool you see...and here we are! :)

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