When a kid I had the real Swedish Silva Polaris compass. It was super high quality and still works, though has some mosquito repellent damage.

I have a few of the green Brunton low cost compasses that I used for basic navigation teaching with Scouts, and they've been very durable. At some point I need to donate those.

It's when I bought the more expensive Brunton compasses for my own use that I started to have the durability and with the TruArc 15 obvious manufacturering issues. Frustrating.

I did buy the good Suunto non-mirrored compass, and its quality is indeed top notch. I suppose I should have purchased their mirrored compass instead of the Bruntons, but I was trying to buy American. That doesn't always pan out.

For a sighting mirrored compass I find the Brunton 8099, now the TruArc 20, to be the best. Easier to target and use than the more typical base plate mirrored compasses. I actually cant nail down why. I just like it better.

By the way, living in the midwest I never had the need to do hard core navigation. Ironically, the most remote area I've traveled was the Boundary Waters, and crazy as it was only one guy out of the six of us carried the one map, and as I recall only he knew the planned route. I was young and stupid, and lucky

To be honest, it's tough navigating with a compass when surrounded by trees and with no real landmarks on the horizon. That describes much of the midwest. These days there are at least more cell towers, but they aren't on many older too maps