I worked in art supply stores for many years. One of the items we sold were loupes. My department was Custom Framing, and a loupe came in handy for telling the difference between a piece of art that might be a scan, like a giclee, or has come out of a printer, or, if you have a genuine print- like an etching, or a lithograph. The loupe enables you to easily see the pixels that make up the image in copies or scans that are absent in an original piece of art. The loupe also shows the imprint of the plate, or ink markings, or other aspects of a genuine artwork.
The loupe I purchased for this purpose at the last art supply store was over twenty times more expensive than the loupe I received from Pen Realm. I was shocked to find that the Pen Realm loupe, which cost pocket change compared to the loupe I used in framing, performed every bit as well as it had.
I was extremely skeptical, upon seeing the price of this item, about adding it to my shopping cart. I also ordered the 25x magnification strength. With any magnifying lens, no matter the cost, quality can be uneven, but the higher up you go on the magnification scale, the more the possibility the lens could be flawed in some way.
In this day and age, it is such an unexpected (and welcome!) surprise that an inexpensive product turns out to be of a superior quality, and out-performs all expectations. This loupe is not a cheap, flimsy item. And its optics are *very* good.
I will be adding all of the other strengths of magnifications of loupes to my next Pen Realm order. Loupes come in handy for all sorts of other things besides peering at pen nibs (and this loupe is excellent for that, to be sure.) I urge anyone who has ever considered purchasing a loupe to add *at least* one or two of these to their Pen Realm shopping cart without hesitation.
And thank you so much, Pen Realm, for offering your customers an item of such amazing quality for an equally amazing price. For those of us on fixed incomes, where every penny counts- finding a great product like this truly feels like Christmas morning!
