I guess I could have said "if the background is anything except a solid color", but I've seen some pretty ugly solid color backgrounds Plain, pure white is okay in my book. Or black.
I like grey a lot myself. Black is good too with silver. Whites not my favorite but I agree I don’t want to see hot pink or anything like that
Imagine being a young, single airman stationed at Barksdale AFB... Dallas is too far, so is New Orleans.
My rules for my listings are: -- Describe it as if there were no pictures -- Picture it as if there were no description. For my buying purposes a circular crop is not necessary, But make sure the image is large and close cropping helps. I need large images because I'm often looking for varieties. And that means focused images with reasonable lighting.
I don't think circle cropping is relevant per se. What is relevant is if it's a professional quality image or not. The details of how it's presented at that point don't matter so much. Having said that, the seller is a lot more important than the picture. If it's a dealer or auction house I really trust, I'll put in a strong bid even without a picture.
I prefer your first image, especially for a raw coin, and it saves time for you. As someone else alluded to, a cropped picture seems like the seller is hiding something, or may be using a stock photo. Having a cropped pic along with others would be ok, but more time consuming. Just my opinion.