Empire Illuminated Bar Globe 16" diameter Blue Ocean Topographical/Political map with up to date cartography, Made in USA. Includes Free Stainless Steel Large Whisky Chilling Balls Gift Set with Molded Globe Details.

I didn’t buy this directly from Amazon; I picked it out from a list of gifts I could get for hitting a milestone at work and it was then purchased for me. I’m a bit disappointed in my choice though the end result looks decent enough.I’d never heard of Replogle before but it turns out they are a US-based company with a good reputation for quality globes. Unfortunately this product wasn’t made to a high quality level, nor was it made in the US.The shipping box and the way everything is packed is excellent. Dropping it off the back of a truck shouldn’t hurt it. 5 stars there. The assembly instructions are where you might find your first challenge. There’s very little text, mostly line drawings to work from, and when inventorying the various parts it’s not always obvious exactly which part is being referenced. Most of the drawings are not to any scale and are far from detailed or overly-simplified so it can be tricky at first to identify the parts that are similar. You’ll figure it out eventually if you put the wrong part in because you may have to back up a step or two to take things back apart to swap the pieces around. There was also one instruction missing which was for attaching the inner bottle holder assembly into the base but you’ll figure it out from the leftover pieces. There also is a true lack of clarity in how to attach the globe halves to their retainers, and nothing at all on how to adjust the upper globe half to properly align with the bottom, which I figured out pretty quickly but may not be obvious to others (unscrew the upper finial enough to slide the half along the bar). It was also really difficult to attach the upper globe plus hinge assembly to the base; I ended up disassembling the hinge which was its own exercise in futility to get back together. It took me about 45 minutes to put it together, working alone, partly because I did have some pieces swapped.There were a couple of spots where the paint was missing, and the molded part where the USB connector from the power supply plugs in to power the LEDs wasn’t clean so it took a great deal of force to plug it in. I think most people not familiar with micro USB connectors may give up assuming the plug is wrong for the socket. But, I got it in there as the photos prove, and it looks decent. Other than those two quality issues, the pieces seemed well made. I’m not sure if they were stamped or laser cut but all the edges and openings other than on the center globe divider were smooth and clean.The globe itself is somewhat topographical with noticeable bumps for the mountain ranges but no depressions for the great deserts and valleys. Really, I don’t find that to be a negative. From a distance the print looks pretty decent but if you get in close it looks like it was made from an overly-compressed image file, but most people are probably not going to pay that much attention (I was doing it because there is a lot of detail on the globe I was trying to read).And let me make it clear, the two globe halves are separated by a metal ring that divides them at the equator. This ring contains the LEDs to illuminate the globe. The two halves DO NOT turn freely if you assemble it correctly, and if you leave them loose they won’t turn smoothly. Figure out which part of the globe you want facing you forever, align the top and bottom, and tighten the round nuts to exactly - well, they don’t tell you that.I put three 1-liter bottles inside the globe and they fit well with the top closed. I doubt we will ever use this to hold bottles or drink ware because we have separate cabinets for those and like to keep everything organized, but maybe for a party I’ll use it.I gave more stars than I think it deserves because it does look pretty nice if you hide the couple of cosmetic flaws from view. However the quality doesn’t justify the price *at all*. If you look for similar products on Amazon that openly disclose their origin you will see the price is about 25-30% of this one, and that point I think is pretty fair.