Why it is so hard to buy coins from pictures.

These 4 pictures are of the SAME coin. It has been heavily polished and is starting to tone back.. but the surfaces are shot. I just wanted to show that with the right setup you can make a coin look many different ways.

 

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man. you could take people on ebay like this

 

More like people could take you on EBay like this.

 

And they try to do just that, every day.

 

makes you wonder how many coins are fakes on ebay...........

 

I dunno, I think if any of the 4 pictures you posted were in an auction, it would raise a red flag for me. Just my opinion.

 

No, I know these pictures are not meant to make this coin look like anything else then what it is... I picked the ugliest coin I could find... one that had been cleaned to death. It was supposed to show that coin that has been lightly or moderately cleaned could be made to look much better. I just wanted to demonstrate how different you can make a coin look by just adjusting lighting and angles. Maybe next time I'll find a better subject.

 

I'm looking at this seller's current auctions (the subject of this thread: http://www.cointalk.com/t139132/) once again, and I'm convinced the photographing of coins can be down right deceptive.

 

It definitely can be. I didn't even edit any of these pictures besides just cropping them down. With programs like Photoshop CS5 which is what I use... someone who was dishonest could make a coin look really really good.

 

Here is a good example of what can be done with the proper programs... This took about 5 minutes.

 

Yep - these pictures http://coins.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=1147&Lot_No=3170&type=wlem make this coin look ugly. I wonder what it looks like in person. This could be the reverse of bad pictures cause low bids. I know I would not buy it from the pictures.

 

What a great example of how a photographer can alter how a photo looks by a small change in setup and lighting.

 

I think that while it's wrong to misrepresent your coins, there's a fine line between brightening a photo of a picture that is taken with a horrible camera for taking pictures of coins and blatantly misrepresenting the coin's condition by adjusting the lighting. In my opinion, if someone has to find a way to make the photo of the coin and inadvertently misrepresents the condition of the coin because they don't have a very good camera for taking pictures of coins, I'm very understanding of that as I used to take pictures of my coins with a computer scanner and it did horrible things to the resulting image, making the coin look worse than it actually was, so I had to brighten the image in Photoshop to get an image that was closer to what it actually looks like than what I got, unfortunately, the Photoshopped image made the coin look better than it really was and I have a feeling that that was why most of my ebay customers in the beginning were "drive by" customers (i.e. they ordered once, than never again). Now that I have an HP photosmart digital camera, I use the "macro" function on the lense adjustment on my camera, which is optimized for capturing the necessary details and intricacies of the average coin and I don't have to do any photoshopping except to crop the images to cut out as much of the background as possible, other than that, I don't do any editing of the coin photos I take. In fact, I've had someone I've shared a photo of one of my coins with and they were astounded by how good my camera is because the photos I take with my HP photosmart digital camera are so lifelike.

 

Sometimes the difference is one click. Now the following example is a graded coin, but this could easily be done with a raw coin as well.





One little touch from the spot heal brush in photoshop and voila, the mark on the cheek is gone and the coin is MS65. If the buyer does not inspect their purchase carefully, they get fleeced.

 

Here's yet another example of how just changing the angle of the camera and how the light hits the coin can have a dramatic difference. Now which coin would you rather buy?

 

It's tough to really know with images.

 

Darn right! For many sellers on ebay, it's not about having great coins. It's about being able to take the best pictures...and by best, I don't mean the most accurate. Making the product look the best to get the highest price, just like some of the local used car lots in town.

 

While I agree, I don't think this practice is new or limited to E-Bay. What really surprises me is that it goes both ways. Believe it or not, it is possible to cherrypick really nice coins with really terrible photos/scans on E-Bay and elsewhere. Here is an example of a beautiful Jefferson Nickel that I bought from DLRC who has possibly the worst images around.

DLRC's Image


My Image


I got this coin at a very reasonable price.

 

did you create the reverse clash marks or are they real?

 

but Paul, I would say that you are far from average with your images. In fact, if I was wanting to sell something, I'd probably ask you to photograph it for me, you're just that good.