What A Difference A [Professional] Scan Can Make ! Please Read ...
JackWESQ
Posts: 2,133 ✭✭✭
So I was flipping through the Robert Edward Auctions catalog and I came across Lot 658 for a 1953 Topps Willie Mays PSA 6 and a 1953 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 6. The 1953 Mays is one of my favorite cards and the serial number looked familiar. (Really, it did.) Here's a link the REA Auction and the cards are pictured below:
REA 1953 Mays and Mantle
Taking a look at those cards, they look quite sharp for a PSA 6. So I searched the PSA serial number (01442610) through my hard drive and sure enough, a hit came up. Below is MY saved image of the 1953 Mays. As you can see, the REA looks a lot sharper. I saved the 1953 Mays file on my hard drive as "01442610 1325 8814399408." This tells me the PSA Serial Number, the Selling Price and the Ebay Auction Number. So I gave it a shot and tried to look up the auction by item number (8814399408) and surprisingly, it came up here:
Ebay Auction for 1953 Topps Willie Mays PSA 6
The auction came up, even though it ended on MAY 25, 2006! (I notice that on some auctions for cards with item numbers beginning with 8 and are ten digits, they still come up). Anyways, the buyer was unitedsportsauctions who has been NARUed. United Sports Auctions also looked familiar. I searched my threads and came across this one:
Thread Re United Sports Auctions
It's quite long, but essentially united sports auctions was selling some high end cards (Mays, Aaron, Mantle RC) with what appeared to be altered images.
But what's the point of this entire post? I suppose that I seriously question the images of the cards that are pictured in the REA catalog, e.g. the card pictured may be sharper, crisper, more colorful, etc., than the card you receive.
/s/ JackWESQ
P.S. If nothing, I recommend that you take a look at the Thread about United Sports Auctions. There are some telling pictures there.
REA 1953 Mays and Mantle
Taking a look at those cards, they look quite sharp for a PSA 6. So I searched the PSA serial number (01442610) through my hard drive and sure enough, a hit came up. Below is MY saved image of the 1953 Mays. As you can see, the REA looks a lot sharper. I saved the 1953 Mays file on my hard drive as "01442610 1325 8814399408." This tells me the PSA Serial Number, the Selling Price and the Ebay Auction Number. So I gave it a shot and tried to look up the auction by item number (8814399408) and surprisingly, it came up here:
Ebay Auction for 1953 Topps Willie Mays PSA 6
The auction came up, even though it ended on MAY 25, 2006! (I notice that on some auctions for cards with item numbers beginning with 8 and are ten digits, they still come up). Anyways, the buyer was unitedsportsauctions who has been NARUed. United Sports Auctions also looked familiar. I searched my threads and came across this one:
Thread Re United Sports Auctions
It's quite long, but essentially united sports auctions was selling some high end cards (Mays, Aaron, Mantle RC) with what appeared to be altered images.
But what's the point of this entire post? I suppose that I seriously question the images of the cards that are pictured in the REA catalog, e.g. the card pictured may be sharper, crisper, more colorful, etc., than the card you receive.
/s/ JackWESQ
P.S. If nothing, I recommend that you take a look at the Thread about United Sports Auctions. There are some telling pictures there.
0
Comments
<< <i>
Taking a look at those cards, they look quite sharp for a PSA 6. So I searched the PSA serial number (01442610) through my hard drive and sure enough, a hit came up. Below is MY saved image of the 1953 Mays. As you can see, the REA looks a lot sharper. I saved the 1953 Mays file on my hard drive as "01442610 1325 8814399408." This tells me the PSA Serial Number, the Selling Price and the Ebay Auction Number. So I gave it a shot and tried to look up the auction by item number (8814399408) and surprisingly, it came up here:
>>
Dude, you're a beast! Interesting find.
Well, all it really means to me is that if I want to buy something expensive,
I am going to HOLD IT in my hand before I pay for it.
The "real" picture of the Mays card is nice. Trying to dynamite the image is NOT nice.
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Steve
<< <i>I hate when people do that.
Steve >>
The ridiculous thing is that the cards that this seller has are killer to begin with...really no need to doctor the pic.
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I don't post here much anymore, but I do read regularly, and thus I stumbled onto this thread. Hope everyone is doing well.
My company is the ad agency for Robert Edward Auctions. Being intimately involved with the layout and design of their catalog, I can vouch for the fact that there are absolutely no shenanigans of any sort happening with respect to scans or photographs featured in the catalog. The company doesn't doctor, sweeten or color correct its scans in any way - it's just a matter of high-quality equipment, diligence in preparing scans and photos, and (hopefully) a talented graphic design team.
Hope this helps clear things up.
-Al
Hope this helps clear things up.
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I have NO doubt that your representation is true.
I am half smart and half stupid, BUT an explanation of the SUPER scan-quality
that goes beyond the one you've volunteered would likely be something I
could grasp. Such an explanation might not be important, if everybody had
not seen the scans in the usa listings.
You are NOT being "called out," but since we can see that the Mays card
looks REALLY good in the new scans some broader explanation about the
technique would be interesting to hear.
Us peasants with our Wal-Mart scanners are eager to learn how to do it
right.
Thanks for stopping in.
Dont ever use the eBay picture hosting feature for a good card, it always looks small blurry and just bad (these are the scans with the camera image watermark in bottom corner).
Always host your own picture independent of eBay if you can (it will be larger, clearer, and brighter).
1977 Topps Star Wars - "Space Swashbucklers"
this could be a case of " jumping the shark".....did they create the biggest, most impressive catalog ever----by photoshopping????? ouch!
The question we don't know is, which scan is closer to the way the card really looks? If the REA scan is closer to the actual appearance of the card, then I would say it is not "card doctoring" and the ebay scan is just poor quality.
But if the ebay scan is closer to the way the card really looks, there is an issue here, but it is a judgment call.
L
<< <i>Us peasants with our Wal-Mart scanners are eager to learn how to do it
right. >>
Well, I'm a peasant with a Wal-Mart scanner, too, but I find that there are a couple of hints that have helped me make some nice, clear scans for when I'm listing my own cards, or posting them on message boards. I've found that for scanning my own cards, a $50 Wal-Mart special will do quite nicely.
First and foremost, fkw is spot on in his assessment that eBay's image hosting service leaves a bit to be desired, in that it downsizes your scans for you, which tends to blur things a bit. When I list cards on eBay, I prefer to host the scans elsewhere, and then link to them from within my auction listings.
Another thing that makes a huge difference, which is alluded to in a post above, is that scanning your cards with the scanner lid down hurts the quality of your scan. Placing the lid down gives your scan a light background which makes it really tough to see the corners and edges of a card - particularly with a PSA slab, which is mostly clear, so the white background is right up against the edges of the card. By leaving the lid up (something we all do elsewhere in life without thinking about it), your cards will have a dark background, which accentuates the corners and edges of a card. It also prevents the bright light from creating a glare, which tends to wash out the image a bit. The image of the '53 Mays as listed on eBay was done with the lid down - thus, it has a white background which makes it really hard to see the corners and edges.
When you're scanning your card with the lid up, just make sure there's no light above your scanner, shining directly on the scanner bed.
I also like to scan my cards at 300 DPI or greater - even though web images are, I believe, all 72 DPI, I've found that the higher-resolution images work better. Some people who know more about this stuff than I do would even disagree with me on this issue, as 72 DPI images work great for the web. However, most of the major auction houses are also scanning at higher resolution, since they're producing their scans for a printed catalog, where a 72 DPI image will be all grainy and fuzzy-looking.
Anyway, here's a scan of a card that I created at 300 DPI with the scanner lid open and hosted on my Photobucket account. To me, images like this present really well, and look great on the web and in eBay listings.
Hope this helps.
-Al
First of all, beautiful card.
One thing I neglected to mention is that once I have the scan done, I re-size it to 40% of its original size before I upload it to Photobucket. No special science behind why I size it to 40%; just trial and error until I arrived at a size that seemed to make sense to me.
Here are a couple of others, just for reference:
Here goes...
Note: I checked the preview and think I could still downsize the scan a bit.
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But seriously Al, thanks for dropping all this knowledge about scanning. Most people (myself included) just sort of guess how to do it but never really optimize their images. I do have one question though. My scanner is fine when it comes to raw cards, but when I scan slabbed cards they come out slightly blurry and you can't see details like sharp corners. I'm guessing this has to do with the fact that the card isn't pressed up directly against the glass. Is there any way to get a better looking scan of graded cards? Below are scans of raw and graded from my scanner at 600 dpi:
Slabs can be a little tougher, because as you note, the card doesn't sit right on the glass. I'm not well-versed in the technology, but I do know that there are two different types of scanners - one type can scan depth well, and the other cannot (unfortunately I don't recall what the two types are called). I believe that virtually any scanner you would buy today is capable of scanning depth, but if you have an old scanner, you might be out of luck.
Some people use the "unsharp mask" function of their photo software to counterbalance the blurriness that sometimes happens when re-sizing an image, but I wouldn't recommend using it on anything higher than the lowest possible setting. Here's an example of what that looks like - the size of this scan was reduced to 50%, because I scanned all my T205s larger than usual for some reason.
-Al
Flatbed scanners, yes. All in one scanners, no. Typically, all in one scanners are very poor for optimizing the depth of graded cards. Kind of a "Jack of all trades, master of none" thing.
1977 Topps Star Wars - "Space Swashbucklers"