I typically go a few years acquiring coins through all means; pocket change, getting rolls from the bank, even buying change from family members at face value to keep them from going to their local Coinstar. It was 2019 the last time I went through everything (took about a year), and I started this round at the very end of 2024. I did the cents first, took about 4 months, and am just about finished with nickels (about 5,000 give or take). This time I purchased some vintage Library of Coins and newer Dansco albums to move the "good" stuff into, keeping the old Whitman folders for the tier two sets. After sorting through the loose change and rolls, photographing the keepers and logging them into the spreadsheet, I go to Ebay and the LCS to get my upgrades, and today is the day to take their photos! I have already finished the Liberties, so time for the Buffalos. I freed all of the slabbed coins from their prisons and will get them and their 2x2 friends photographed and loaded onto the computer to gussy them up and hold for posterity.
yeah yeah.. I keep saying I'm gonna redo all the pics for my LC set, but I never seem to get around to actual doing it lol
@Tall Paul - the scope is a simple Elikliv with tissue paper tucked around the LED lights that surround the lens to eliminate the glare and the two side lamps set to about 15%. The overhead is a 40-watt soft white bulb about 36" above and as direct overhead as possible. The two magnifying desk lamps are set with the white LED setting at 3 of 10 brightness, angled as high as possible and from angles to try and hit the entire circumference of the coin. I also only do these during daytime with the room window shaded but allowing indirect light in. I find this gets the colors very close to natural. The only problem is with any mirror-like finishes; they tend to have a yellow tint. They look good, and there is no glare from reflection, but just a bit of yellow shows. I have tried adjusting the settings on the camera, but anything I do affects adversely affects the quality of the other photos, so I am accepting it for now. I will be posting a few follow-ups of the photos soon to get feedback from the forum.
After taking all of the pictures and loading onto the laptop it's time to get them ready for viewing. I bought my laptop loaded with MS Office, as I have used it my entire professional life and am comfortable with all of the aps. I use Photos for editing and start by double-clicking the jpg to open. Click Edit, then the background icon. Select Replace (far right) and set the Hex to d9d9d9 (very light gray). The shadows are mostly erased, but often some edges are a little soft, and sometimes it even eats into the rim a little, but for the most part it looks good. Then crop it. I get as close as possible to the edges without overlapping, and on the final adjustment make sure that it is perfectly square (it will show pixel counts for both width and height as you adjust) Then save, and we have a keeper! The original was too large to load so I had to take a snip of it.
Next is the side by side, like the professionals do. I am NOT a professional, but I can get close. I use Excel, where I designed a frame with a background that matches the d9d9d9 I used on the coin photo, so none of the background shows. Reading other posts from CT members gave me a lot of good advice, one being to add some sort of watermark to keep it from being too smooth. There is a positioning grid that I bring to front, then load the coin photos. I set the height of each to the prescribed amount (width matches as the aspect ratio is locked on and the photo was perfectly square when it was cropped), then place them in the grid. Next is to clean up the edges. Due to the background editor not being perfect. I made a "doughnut" of the exact same size as the perimeter of the coin in the same color (d9d9d9) so it blends in, but when brought to front will cover the edges of the photo (I changed the color of the one on the right to brown so it could be seen). Then each coin is selected and positioned to best show the edges. As I mentioned sometimes the background will eat into the photo a little, so I have an arc that matches the edge of the coin and set the color to match. This will smooth out the defect. If there is actual damage I don't do this, only if it is due to the editing software. Finally, edit the data and set my grade for raw (Learning Every Day Grading Service), or the TPG info if I freed the coin from a slab, add any details (none to show on this coin) then do a snip of the full frame and it is done.
