A study of online marketing by Great Southern Coins

These are three excellent points. Your analysis is better than mine.

1. They don’t show the hairlines. They do show the dirt, however. Hairlines are very dependent on angle, and I have other photos of this V nickel that don’t show them either. So I can’t be certain that they hid them on purpose – or did they? Let’s say that this is another thing they could have mentioned, such as “lightly circulated, some soiling on the fields and surface grazing.”

2. I think my photo is not the best. I chose it to represent my impression of the coin at first glance.

3. This is a really excellent point. My four purchases are not high-end and I can only take this case study so far with them. Maybe we can learn some things from these photo comparisons. Or maybe we will just show that generic material is presented without adornment, leaving open the question about high-end raw material. This is still worth pursuing. Maybe others will provide examples of less generic material.

If GSC did not exist, someone would have to create them. (This was said about a former employer of mine.) In this market we have the LCS, a local seller with limited inventory catering to the walk-in customer. They don’t usually have the ability to stock large numbers of high-end coins that would languish in inventory. At the other end we have large auction houses that deal solely in graded coins. They don’t touch raw or detailed coins. Someone, say GSC, has to fill in the middle. Some vendor, somewhere, has to handle the coins that won’t grade, haven’t been graded, or are not cost-effective to grade. An observation, not a judgement either way.

Case Study 3. 1936-D Buffalo Nickel “1936-D Buffalo Nickel, Sharp Lustrous Gem!”


Original Vendor Photos (joined by me for display)





This is another generic coin that is widely available and not expensive. As has been pointed out, no dealer has a financial incentive to spend extra time to artificially enhance these photos. The cost of the effort would not be regained.

I have shown a copper coin, now two nickels. My last case study will be silver.

Impressions
The photos show a full strike on the reverse with a nice round foreleg, which is so often slightly flattened. The obverse is almost as good, but there is a little flatness just above the braid. The photos show a pattern of luster that is dampened down by underexposing the picture.

In hand, the luster is confirmed, as I show below. In this case the coin looks just like I expected. That is, I expected that the coin photo was underexposed to keep from overexposing the lustrous highlights.

Analysis

A new collector might not understand this convention of coin photography. It would be easy to see that it might look dark although with good details.

Conclusions

This coin supports several points made earlier.

1. A generic, commodity coin in good condition needs a photo that is good enough to sell it. It does not benefit from any enhancements; that is not cost-effective.

2. While there is no incentive to juice the photo, this photo defines a baseline for their technique. We can compare this basic technique to photos that we feel may be enhanced.


Here is what I see in hand.

 

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I just got a fairly common gold from them the other day, but it was really neat because it had nice clashes. That was why I bought it. I will try posting for a gold comparative. Here are their pics:

 

And here are my pictures of it. GSC did not mention any grade (AU, etc), and judging from their pics, I thought the obverse MAY have been lightly cleaned. They did not even mention the clash, which was my main reason to purchase. I used 2 different cameras, and a couple different light sources. You can judge for yourself how accurate their pics are. I actually think their picture show MORE marks, and look more cleaned than mine do.

 

I've looked at their auctions a few times. My conclusion is the raw coins are mostly "Detail" coins that have been cracked out. Straight graded stay in the holder.

 

I can see that, but they also single piece out proofs from older sets. You can tell because the listing says something like "keep an eye out for the rest of this 1942 set". They usually keep a few other coins between each coin of a proof set so you can catch your breath a little between coins.

 

I'll bet I have read a hundred different threads about these folks, on several different forums. Most have said that the coin they received did not look like the image that was shown. With that said, I have never read that anyone had a hard time returning a coin.
Those that have the time to play the game can find some nice coins. I hate to return anything so I don't play the game.

 

I'm just happy they put their big "G O" on their pics so I can ignore

 

My 2 cents worth - I have always thought the pictures of their copper coins make them look cleaned or recolored or just something was done to them (like 1909-s Lehigh posted). The few times I thought I saw something that looked nice I was outbid by a bunch. I have always been leery of their raw copper.

 

Does your double photo with two different lighting angles take a long time to execute, or is it pretty simple? I am soooo groovin' on that.

The difference I see between GSC's photo and Ron's is ANYTHING BUT "brightening". If anything, GSC is unfairly darkening it down.

 

I wish I could cherry-pick GSC's computer guy...

 

It is very simple. It might even be simpler if I looked for better software.

I discussed it in bits and pieces in a couple of places.

See Grading the Buffalo Nickel and two posts in the Morgan thread starting at Post Your Morgan Dollars #2583 and #2586.

You can see more examples of some Lincoln photos over in the Post Your Lincolns thread, say at post #4411. or #4760.

If anyone wants it, I could start a thread with all the steps, pictures, and arrows. Although I have some custom software that I wrote, that is immaterial because it merely embodies steps I previously performed in an image editor.

 

Wait, so you admit that there are problem coins in their inventory that are being sold without the problem being divulged? This is my whole complaint with GSC. A complaint that you should agree with since your posted this not too long ago:

As for the singles from early proof sets, it makes sense that they would break them out and sell the coins individually. My guess is though that they cherrypick the sets and remove any CAMEO or really high grade examples for grading submission. Have you ever seen an early proof set offered with a coin missing?

 

Here's a problem coin from GSC that they say is a solid Gem BU. If it doesn't have "++" next to Gem BU, does it mean that it's a problem coin in GSC-speak? Does 1 "+" mean that it's low MS? Or, how do we decipher what they mean with what they say?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/371917066644

 

Case Study 4. 1918-D Standing Liberty Quarter “1918-D Standing Liberty Quarter, Choice AU Tough Date, ** Free Shipping!”

Original Vendor Photos (joined by me for display)




This is a recent purchase from eBay. The link was still active as of today at 1918-D Standing Liberty Quarter, Choice AU Tough Date, ** Free Shipping!
This is the only silver coin I have purchased from GSC. With the reflectivity of silver, photographs need to be underexposed to avoid blowing out the highlights. I assumed this coin was shinier in hand.

Impressions
The coin is a bright, shiny quarter with some wear and tear and great luster. They billed it as “Choice AU”. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I interpret that like I do “Choice BU” – as midrange AU, say an AU55. Maybe they aren’t trying to be clinical in their wording, but the pictures also look about AU55.

Analysis
Their photos show a reverse with no apparent damage marks. The eagle’s breast shows some feather detail, but not a lot. There is dirt in the V of the wings and the right edge of the right wing, so I deduced the coin had not been cleaned.

The obverse shows a decently full head, with a visible ear hole. Liberty’s right leg has a little flatness and the top of the date is weak, but overall the strike is strong. Again, there is dirt in the crevices so the coin is not cleaned.

Now about these scratches. The long red lines show the angle of one single event that scratched the coin in several places. The little red arrows point at marks visible on the original photograph. Their photo does not show a scratch above the shoulder and below the B.


Conclusions
Different lighting and different angles reveal different things. That’s unescapable. Here is detail of the shoulder area at two very similar angles. These are both from my photos. I was not trying to hide this; it’s just a side effect of adjusting the angle to the camera.


Their angle does not show this scratch. But neither did they go out of their way to hide the other damage that I marked up on their photo.

In this case I see, in hand, a coin that is nicer than the photos. Yes, there are marks, but I am not a stickler for the rims – I look at the body of the coin. When I tilt the coin in hand I can see the big scratch and the nicks in the leg. I just don’t find them distracting. And it’s shiny and throws cartwheel luster when I tip it.

I am OK with this purchase. A discerning eye could see the scratches in their photos and decide whether to bid. Each of you may draw different impressions based on what you like, your collecting goals, and your budget. I hope I have provided enough information for you to do that.

Here is what I see in hand. Please expand it to study how the two angles hide or reveal the surface marks. I find studying these animations helps me understand what I'm seeing under different camera angles.

 

Not that I recall, but Amtrak now counts me as a Senior Citizen, so there's that. I remember sets of 5, and completely unconnected singles. I don't recall a 4 of 5 or a 3 of 5.

 

This answer is easy - COMPLETELY disregard those title lines.

 

I HAVE seen problem coins on GSC, but they are pretty obvious. In other words, the photos are adequate to show the problem, much better than photos from some other online sites. The REAL problem is, or can be, very subtle problems; those that are only seen in the hand, and not the photo. I believe there HAVE TO BE those in the GSC history, statistically if no other way. I just have never had that experience with them. I've always been super happy with what I've received.

 

What do you see that leads you to conclude it is a problem coin?

I looked at the photos and I see one scratch, but I also see what they say: a well struck MS coin with great color.

Do you think the color is suspect? Or is the scratch too severe? Is it the parallel lines from rolling out the planchet?Something else? Help me see what you see.

 

I don't want to mislead ANYBODY here about how I use GSC's listings, and it MAY be material to my experience with them.

I don't right now recall what my first purchase was with them, but when I get home from this road trip, I will check. From that purchase onward, I get their seemingly daily (lately) email with what they consider the most interesting pieces they have closing that night. I scan it quickly to see if there are any coins from series I'm working on. Most days there are none and it ends there.

When I do see a coin that might interest me, I check my budget first to see if I might be able to play. Sometimes not s'much. Sometimes, let's roll.

Sometimes, I see a coin in the right series, but I might have a different date at the top of my want list. Since they tend to run material of a given type a lot, that's not a stretch. If that is the case, I have a stock "search" on eBay set to them as a seller. I set the sort for "closing soonest" and thumb through them closing THAT NIGHT; I think it's a "slide right".

I have never even paid attention to any title line. I'm quickly flipping through images hoping one of them might pique my interest. It's like an 8-year-old flipping through a friend's baseball cards. "Got it, got it, got it, don't want it, got it," etc.

Most days I do this, there's nothing I want. Some days there is. I examine each photo like a ninja, zooming in, moving it around. I come up with my best price I'll pay, type it in, and never look at the auction again. Sometimes, the next morning on the train, there's an email. Most times, there's not.

 

I agree it looks like a nice coin.