Hello I just inherited my grandfather's coin collection and I have been studying the collection for two days and really think I've struck a gold mine but want to ask some other collectors before walking into the coin shop hear locally. - Edited -
Hi Brian and welcome to CT. We would love to see your coins but you will need to start your own new thread. You will get good answers here but you will need to post good images of the coins.
I appreciate the compliment, and especially the challenge to explain it all. Of course, the answer is primarily “lighting”. And, a lens that focuses closely and does not distort the image. Fortunately, I think most of this is explained in two threads: Animation and Coin Photography Post your coin photography set-up In these threads, I give credit to who supplied my current photography setup. You can see my early efforts with a cell phone and a superzoom Sony camera, but my current setup lets me see the image on my computer before taking the shot. That makes it possible to look at the entire sequence of 9 positions that I use to make each GIF animation. The step-by-step evolution is explained, which I personally prefer, since you get to live through all the false starts and bad ideas. That really deepens the understanding more than a simple formula of “do this” and “”do that”.