Ancient coin auction, 487 lots, no buyer fee, low starting bids
fsrcoin
Posts: 39 ✭
Hi,
Auction 111 will close 11 PM February 11 — 487 lots of ancient & early coins, mostly good stuff, with LOW starting bids & NO buyer fee. Includes group lots, literature, and some fixed price specials.
Catalog begins at: www.fsrcoin.com/j.html
Bid simply by e-mailing me (best); or fax, phone, or snail mail.
Or at https://www.biddr.ch/auctions/fsrcoin/browse?a=911
Or https://emax.bid/en/auction/722
World coin list updated at www.fsrcoin.com/133.htm
Evolution —
IN THE BEGINNING . . . of my auctions, in 1985, I made coin pictures on a xerox machine. How bad were they? Have a laugh! — www.fsrcoin.com/xerox.jpg
Then I got a state-of-the-art “Lepcyzk box.” Named for auctioneer Joe Lepcyzk, it had a built-in Polaroid camera and lighting, to photograph several coins at a time. Initially, I used it to provide photos on request, charging $1 per shot, the cost of film. Then around 1995 I started sending out, with auctions, a printed sheet of about 100 coin pics. Making the layout was very time-consuming (and the film and printing were expensive).
Then new technology: a scanner, with photos produced on my printer. Picture quality was better, but there was still the tedious cut-and-paste.
Eventually I progressed to a digital camera, making my own set-up stage, and now, instead of printing, putting pictures online, of every lot: in layouts of twenty or so coins together in each image.
As other online auctions proliferated, I had to raise my game again, to now show individually each coin's obverse together with the reverse. I never did figure out an efficient way to get them side-by-side. Still, it took around 30 hours of work, with individual coin photoshopping of brightness/contrast, color, etc.
Ever trying for improvement, I did some research and got a better digital camera. A problem is lower resolution and increasing distortion outside the center of an image, limiting the number of coins in each shot.
When I mentioned to my wife starting on the pictures for this latest sale, she remarked, “My new phone has a really good camera.” It’s not an iPhone or other top-of-the-line model. But I tried it — with definitely better results. I could do more coins in each shot, with better image quality, needing less photoshop adjustments.
Ever upward. One day we’ll be uploading the pictures directly into bidders’ brains.
Happy New Year,
Frank S. Robinson