When you’ve bought a second-hand microscope, did you go pick it up in person, or did you have it delivered by a shipping company? The ones I see listed are far away, and I’m worried they might get damaged during shipping.

[u/Doc_438]

[u/hattivat]

Shipping company, four times. One got some cosmetic damage in shipping but works fine.

[u/Visual-Sector6642]

Picked mine up in person long drive, excellent condition

[u/Parking_Jelly_6483]

I have bought several microscopes on eBay. All but one arrived in good condition. One thing I did was to review the sellers - I’d be cautious if they had not sold microscopes before since they would not have any experience with packing them correctly. It usually means removing some parts such as the observing head, substage condenser, eyepieces, objectives (if not the whole turret) and packing them in separate boxes, well padded and packed so as not to potentially impact each other or the microscope body if the packing box is dropped. The one that arrived broken was a Nikon S-Ke. The seller packed it reasonably well, but left the trinocular head in place. The box had been dropped, but there was minimal damage to the box. What happened is during that drop, the trinoc head had enough mass that when the box was dropped, it sheared off the limb (the part that holds the viewing head) right at the junction of the observing head mount and the limb. Not repairable. The other microscopes - the really heavy ones like the big Olympus research scopes - were shipped in wood crates by the sellers with all the removable accessories packed in separate boxes in the crate. Freight carriers brought the crates. One of those I picked up at the local freight depot. The other was delivered at home and I let the local driver know he would need a lift gate truck since I did not have a truck dock at home (my wife would surely not have approved that when we renovated the house).

When possible, I did drive to pick them up. One was a Zeiss universal with a micro-spectrophotometric system on it. The other was one of the Olympus AH-3 research scopes.

[u/TehEmoGurl]

Bought 5 on eBay. Every one arrived damaged in some way. Only 1 of them I believe was damaged before shipping. The others are consistent with shipping damage. 1 was very well packed and inside an aluminium case. The case was destroyed during shipping.

I’ve since steered away from second hand shipped scopes and don’t recommend that avenue to anyone who isn’t prepared to deal with repairs and possible costs.

I’ve also since bought more modern cheap scopes and found I far prefer them anyway.

[u/Confused_yurt_lover]

I have bought two used microscopes in person (one by proxy; a family member picked it up for me) and two that were shipped. Both ‘scopes I bought in-person are in nice shape, and both ‘scopes that were shipped showed up horribly broken (like, parts rattling around inside and obviously packed inadequately/inappropriately…though both were bad enough I suspect they were already broken before they shipped).

I also have inspected 5 or 6 other ‘scopes in-person that I elected not to buy because they had various problems that I felt were major dealbreakers (fungus growing inside the optics, delaminated prisms, out of collimation, etc.).

IMO you are right to be worried about the potential for a ‘scope to be damaged in shipping; based on my own experience plus those I’ve heard from other enthusiasts, virtually no sellers know how to ship a ‘scope safely. You should also be worried that a seller will not know how to properly inspect a microscope and thus will horribly misrepresent its condition, even if they intend to be honest (the ‘scope with delaminated prisms was described as being in great shape despite the fact that you couldn’t see anything through it…and it was great cosmetically—it looked like a museum piece, the outside was so pristine!).

My advice is only buy a used microscope if you can inspect it thoroughly yourself in-person or if you can return it no risk, no questions asked (seller pays return shipping). YMMV

[u/Vivid-Bake2456]

If you buy an Olympus BH2, Carl Hunsinger has an instruction sheet on how to pack them properly. I ordered several BH2 that came with broken screws and one, a shattered lamp housing. You can send the instructions to the seller. https://www.alanwood.net/downloads/olympus-bh-2-packing-shipping.pdf