Auction pics, my pics & Trueview pics

Crackout

Just for comparison, below are pics of a coin from an auction house, followed by my pics, and then the Trueview pics of the same coin. With all of my coin buying coming from online venues these days, being able to decipher some online photos can be a little bit of a challenge. These pics were fairly straight forward and having access to the Trueview is always a huge plus. But of the three, I think the coin is best represented by my photos.

The auction house photos always seem overly washed out and sometimes the surfaces of the coin seem rather harsh. But they do accurately capture the entire slab and most of the details of the coin. However, I think wonderfully toned coins may suffer from these auction images.

The Trueviews are great for seeing absolute detail. But the straight-on lighting they use can sometimes make the coin not seem three dimensional. And I seem to notice a prevalence of reddish hues (especially on Buffalo nickels) that isn't apparent when viewing some of these coins in hand.

My pics were taken with an older (and kinda cheap) Canon PowerShot A2500 camera and then processed with Photoshop to crop & paste on a black background. There is certainly loss in detail around the rim where the focus is lost with this camera. And the lighting (from my garage lights!) is hit and miss most times. But in the end, the coin in the pic looks most like the silver coin in the slab!

Anyway, just thought I'd share. Please post any examples of your photos versus the photos you had to gauge in order to pull the trigger on a coin you bought online.

Mr_Spud

Here’s one, no Trueview available. Here’s the only auction pictures that I had to go by.


And here’s my iPhone pictures, which pretty much shows dead on how the coin looks in hand. I’m happy with the coin 🌞

ricko

@Crackout ... I really like your pictures best of all... but thanks for showing the distinct differences in the pictures. Further supports the difficulty in judging coins from pictures. Cheers, RickO

1northcoin

Your photo seems to be a compromise of the other two. Very interesting. Thanks.