Heritage Auction pictures

TommyType

Anyone else notice that Heritage pictures, although good on detail, just don't capture the colors right? Basically, they're just too dark. It seems to be worse with lusterous coins, but here's a comparison from my own experience...first the Heritage picture, then mine. The only change I made was to resize their pic, and convert to jpg. (I guess you'll have to take my word for it that my pic captures the look of the coin better).

Heritage picture:


My picture:

tradedollarnut

Heritage should hire Shylock!

jonesy

I agree!! If they want to sell coins at a good price, you must have good pictures. 95% of the coins I have got from Heritage look better then the pictures.

Casey

I agree. I've avoided bidding on several auctions because the images were so bad (dark). But I'm usually pleasantly surprises when I end up winning the auctions and get the coins in hand.

gemtone65

The Heritage pictures have improved somewhat over the past year. But they are still far below the quality they should be. Most of their competitors do a far better job in this important area.

Bikingnut

You would think a company that does as much business as Heritage could afford quality photography.

Boom

Some pictures make the coins look downright ugly.

morgannut2

Hey stop it. I love their black pictures. That way I only have to bid against dealers at the live sale!

shylock

You can imagine the assembly-line manner in which they have to image most of their coins due to the huge volume. But it would be nice if they could give special treatment to at least the top 20-30% of their lots, it would encourage even more great collections to be offered to them.

At last year's FUN Lakesammman took some great photos of David Schweitz's monster commemoratives. When you compare his image of the Cleveland (bottom pic) to Heritage's you realize just how silly it is to judge coins by their photo. Lake's pic gives you a good taste of what it looks like in person. If all we ever saw was the Heritage pic we'd be scratching our heads about the hammer price on this one.

Barry

Volume is no excuse for their lousy pics. With larger volume they make more money. With more money they should be able to afford a larger staff and/or better equipment. I, for one, would never consign coin to Heritage for this exact reason. If others feel as I do, their volume would increase further with better pics. That alone would pay for another photographer (or at least another light bulb )
(edited for typo)

BAJJERFAN

Too bad their return policy isn't in accord with their shortcomings in the photo area. The last one I purchased from one of their sig auctions was sort of a disappointment; I knew 2 seconds after I took it out of the mailer that I wasn't gonna keep it. Rather than even try to return it I just put it up on eBay priced to sell. Amazingly the thing sold in about half an hour and the new owner is real happy with it.
Their photo skills can smoetimes be a boon to the buyer, but a real dis-service to the seller.

tmot99

You think that's bad, this is what I found:

Heritage photo (small, but that's the best I can get)


My pictures: