Coin Photography Question

Hi,

With respect to everyone that photographs coins professionally, do people actually send coins to get photographed? This is mainly directed towards the more popular guys like @jtlee321 and @blu62vette. If this business is popular, how many requests do you guys get per month/year? Thanks for any help!

 

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Do you have business insurance? In case you lose a coin, damage a coin, or someone claims you damaged their coin?

 

No I don't. However, I put in my website that if I lose or damage it, I refund the person, but if the PS loses it, they have to refund the person, not me. I don't know what to do if someone claims that I damaged their coin, but I don't think people in this nice community are so stupid that they will do that to a fellow collector. Just in case that happens, do you have any advice for this situation?

 

You should include Messydesk..

 

Never, ever, never, trust anyone. Only you care about your business. Everyone is out for themselves.

Insurance is the only thing you can really do to protect yourself. That and a good legal contract that a lawyer writes up.

Imagine that someone sends you a $10,000 rare greek coin to photograph and when it's returned they claim you scratched it.. thats a big legal nightmare for you.

I'd be interested in hearing what the others have to say.

 

Unfortunately you are correct Frank. I wouldn't think anyone on this forum would try to pull a scam, but you never know.

 

And you can’t just limit yourself to the people on this board. There are hundreds of thousands of collectors that are a potential market.

Also, what if he legitimately damaged a high value coin. Accidents happen. You need insurance to cover your assets.

 

Operating on the people will do the right thing and be understanding basis is basically asking to get sued. It just takes the wrong person one time

 

Corollary: People suck.

 

Don’t trust anyone...even people in this nice community. You never know what will happen.

I once got into a heated discussion with a member of the forum...a prominent member who is still very active. He did something I felt was dishonest and I called him out on it in a thread that he started (about what he had done). His response was to go and track down my personal business Yelp page and leave a fraudulent negative review as a retaliation.

I learned that people on this nice community are not to be trusted.

 

To answer your question about if people send coins to get photographed. Yes in fact they do. However, it is a business of trust. They have to trust me in sending some of their more prized possessions along with a form of payment. They have faith that I will photograph and return their coins. So, it takes a long time to build up a reputation, which I have been working on doing by being an active member here and another popular coin forum.

While I have built up a handful of clients whom have all given repeated business, it's certainly not enough to live off of. I enjoy what I do and I am still working on building my business. I am reluctantly finding that I have to expand into social media such Facebook (which I despise) as well as Twitter and Instagram. I am not wired like a lot people who take to those platforms very well. I have to force myself to even start doing it.

Any business involving working with other peoples property would be foolish not to have insurance to protect yourself. When you are handling $50,000.00 plus of someones coins, it can be nerve racking. Which is why when I find myself in that position, I work my butt off to get the coins imaged over night and back out to the PO the next day if possible. I also recommend using a PO Box and never use your personal address. When returning coins, I mandate that they be returned via Registered Mail, unless my client has a third party shipping insurance that will cover the return shipping. I trust myself far more than the USPS, so nothing leaves my custody without being insured.

 

Do you carry insurance and do you have a legal contract you use with your clients?

 

Yeah they do

 

I do carry insurance. I use the same business insurance my parents use for their business. I don't have a legal contract written for my clients, I use a submission form that they fill out which includes a list of each coin by date, mint mark, denomination and grade (if the coin is in a TPG holder) as well as their declared value. I have included specific instructions on how to fill out the form and my policy for return shipping.

 

Excuse me cats rule! Max...




I used to have my now ex-girlfriend take photos of my coins with the very nice Nikon camera and macro lens I bought her. Now I have my local coin shop owner take pics of my coins. Charges me a fair price for each coin. I will buy me a nice Nikon next year with Macro lens with auto focus.

 

I've done photography for a very select clientele, where most of my work has been in doing detail shots, or specialized efforts for publication. The potential problems mentioned here have kept me from wanting to expand into a more general full-coin photography business.

I much prefer building systems for folks to do the photography themselves. Ultimately this is much less risky for me. It's also more economical for many of the folks I've sold systems to, since it essentially pays for itself after some number of coins. For many folks it becomes an obsession, especially for the ones shooting detail shots of varieties and such. For others it is a new hobby, and they enjoy learning about photography, studying their coins more fully, etc. And for others it becomes a business...and we've come full circle!

 

Thank you all for the advice. I will be honest now, I may be a bit young to have my business registered and have insurance for the business... However, I'll see if I can give it a shot. How do I get insurance for this type of (hopefully) high value stuff?

 

I think you are getting ahead of yourself.

Before you go dumping money into insurance you may want to figure out if this is a profitable business model.

You first need to develop a business plan that contemplates the market size, market rates, operating costs, marketing, etc.

Do some research on business plans first and go from there.

 

You'll need to call an agent that specializes in business/commercial insurance. They will ask you a bunch of questions to get an idea of the size of your business, what your product or service is and what you need insurance for. They are going to tell you that they will need to call around and figure it out because coin photography is a very niche business. You have items for a short period of time and the values always fluctuate. So your best bet it to just pick up the phone and call around.