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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;RonSanderson, post: 2747283, member: 77413&quot;]These are three excellent points. Your analysis is better than mine.</p><p><br /></p><p>1.&nbsp; 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.”</p><p><br /></p><p>2.&nbsp; I think my photo is not the best. I chose it to represent my impression of the coin at first glance.</p><p><br /></p><p>3.&nbsp; 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.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Case Study 3. 1936-D Buffalo Nickel <i>“</i><u><a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/1936-D-Buffalo-Nickel-Sharp-Lustrous-Gem/352013059893?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&amp;_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2648" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/1936-D-Buffalo-Nickel-Sharp-Lustrous-Gem/352013059893?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&amp;_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2648" rel="nofollow">1936-D Buffalo Nickel, Sharp Lustrous Gem!</a></u><i>”</i></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Original Vendor Photos (joined by me for display)</b></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]628354[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]628355[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]628356[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have shown a copper coin, now two nickels. My last case study will be silver.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Impressions</b></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Analysis</b></p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Conclusions</b></p><p><br /></p><p>This coin supports several points made earlier.</p><p><br /></p><p>1.&nbsp; 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.</p><p><br /></p><p>2.&nbsp; 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.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Here is what I see in hand.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]628359[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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