I have some hand magnifiers of various sorts and have recently gotten into meteorite collecting and want to be able to study the petrographic features of the slices I have acquired but am not doing any research. An actual petrographic microscope (as described in the Norton/Chitwood Field Guide) is not suitable as I have no thin section slides nor am I very likely to in the future.
Options I am considering are a binocular microscope in the $200-$400 range (inexpensive student or college instruments), a low end gemological microscope ($850 at AmScope - trinocular with both bright field and dark field) another interesting low end option now is digital "microscope" used for coins and circuit boards from $30 to $300 depending on screen size and features.
Any thoughts?