In August 2018 I started a thread https://www.cointalk.com/threads/byzantine-anonymous-folles.322682/ announcing my web site on Byzantine anonymous folles http://augustuscoins.com/ed/ByzAnon/ The many responses helped me improve it. I recently got a nice follis of Class A2 which I will add to the Class A page: It is usually attributed to Basil II (the Bulgar slayer) and Constantine VIII, 979-1028. Sear 1813. In the Forum table of ornaments on Class A2 folles: https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Anonymous Byzantine Class A Folles it seems to be "F1c". Compare my photo which is almost exactly like the coin (which I am holding up to the computer screen now) with the seller's photo: The seller's photo shows the detail better, but makes the coin look "dry" and lighter colored than it is. It actually has a dark glossy surface which does not look dry in hand. When you acquire a coin, be sure to compare the coin to the photo. You can learn a lot about how that seller's photographs represent coins. I solicit responses of two types: 1) recent anonymous folles 2) pairs of photos comparing a seller's photo to your own photo.
Photos are one of the reasons I did not buy (yet) any byzantine coins from Savoca on ebay - were either black and white or red and green. I wonder about the red and green ones, if they look as per photo, how did they manage to have so many different coins with the same aspect? I include below one photo of such a coin, for which they received a recent feedback, as an exemple. The black and white remind me of the "life is like a box of chocolate" saying. Second reason is the 15 EUR for shipping to a EU country, while their big neighbor ebayer charges half for the same service. Except this one, I saw photos in warm light, making the coin look yellow-ish, and scanned coins, making the high relief look blurry. I have no photos before and after, mainly because my photos are pretty bad (still).
Valentinian, You bring up an interesting point. Coins with a dark color are difficult to photograph . Many sellers & auction houses will intentionally lighten a dark coin to accent details. Pictured below is a sellers photo of a Diocletian nummus that has been edited this way & below it is the same coin in a slab that I shot, & what the coin really looks like. Diocletian, AD 301-303, Billon nummus, 10.12 gm, 29 mm. RIC 115a.
There is a tendency for their coins to be lighter than what is shown on Biddr and Ebay. Its most likely due to the coins being a bit dark and thus harder to show their details properly. Here is another example:
My photo: CNG's photo: I noticed that the contrast of CNG is way higher than my photo (it's just almost black and white - I conducted a colour analysis online, showing almost no other colours than black, grey and white) So I increased the contrast, step by step: contrast + 40% contrast + 70% Same, but with saturation decrease ~ 50% and lighting up ~20%
I recently purchase one of the above from an auction site. I loved it at first site as it has a dusty patina that rocks. Cudo's to Quant-Geek to helping folks with his post. Don't purchase any coin online if you can't see the image properly. There are at least two reasons one wants to photograph their coins for sale, and each are totally useful and desired. One: to show details. Two: to show the beauty. They require totally different lighting processes to achieve the goal. If you are a seller you want the buyer to get the best picture that combines them both. This can prevent disappointment which isn't good for the buyer, and happiness when it fulfills expectation. OOPS, there is a Third reason, to sell the coin and by this get repeat business. Great business model. Just sayin'.
Here are a few more examples. Savoca does have some really nice gems that are usually mis-attributed. But, you also need to be careful as they also peddle some fakes as well. I am hoping that it is unintentional, though.
As we say, when you have an itch, you need to scratch it. So I bought this ugliness (and its sister) to satisfy my curiosity. The coin in hand looked exactly as per photo. Colors were pretty accurate. Under the microscope at 20x, I believe that the coin was waxed with something (accumulated in deeper parts, shiny in strong light) and I could pick up 3 fiber pieces that were adhering to the surface. The red is the copper where patina was removed by what I believe to be an aggressive cleaning. The big open fields appear polished to a flat appearance. On some smaller and deeper areas, like the middle-left part of the cross and around the portrait seems to be some remains of a thicker patina. Between 12 and 1 o'clock looks that the coin was treated for bronze disease successfully. Long story short, and some white spirit - acetone - ren. wax later, it looks like this. The green is still there, and I believe these are the remains of the patina. The funny part is that the coin looks quite uniform brown in hand, with much less visible green than on these photos. I do not know how they managed to clean/treat so many coins that they have the same appearance, but for sure they could had done a better job.
I agree with Black Friar's reason three. We rarely hold it against a seller when we buy a coin that looks better than his photo but we might hesitate to consign coins to a seller with poor photos. I can not accept statements about how a coin looks 'in hand'. If you don't like the way a coin looks 'in hand', move the hand somewhere with better light. Don't curse the darkness, turn on a light. Many/most of the examples here show that coins reflect glare as well as they do light. Often the difference between seeing glare or not is a very small wiggle of the hand. Photos with no glare tend not to look metallic while coins with too much are harsh. Quant. Geek showed an interesting difference. The lower photo shows excessive glare on the obverse upper left suggesting the coin was slightly bent or cupped. A slight tip of the coin would have changed this but for the better or just different would require trying it. The first image is too light but makes the coin look flatter. Each tells more about the light used for the photo than it does for the coin. That may be why some dealers are using movies to show high dollar coins that change in the light. Learn to read the images made by your favorite sellers and buy the coins you feel you will like based on experience.
