As for me, with all the talk about this sale I thought I would have a look at the lots online. When I first saw the photos of the coins I realized why everybody was saying how much homework was going into making proper bids. I thought to myself that I've never seen any coins with that look in either decent Internet photos or actual coins in hand. Without piling on, I'll state its easy to overlook a tiny detail problem on a coin that looks solid and when photos like the ones that HA used leave too many questions unanswered, well, that's when I decided to pass. There are way more beautiful coins in the world than my money will cover without taking such a chance.
Wow!!! An amazing and extremely informative thread! Thank you so much for making the effort and sharing the results. Your photography is supurb!
Confirms my concerns when viewing the photos of the recent auctions. The huge red flag were the slab photos which clearly had some super dark coins and their stark contrast to the feature photos. Brightening up the slab pics some and some white balance adjustment from there gave me a pretty good idea as to what the coin might really look like....
I'd be furious if I purchased some of those coins based on those blown out images!!!! What a sickening wake up call would be had when that newP package was opened!!!
Thankfully my three legger Buffalo from their auction of about a month ago was spot on!!! So, I'm happy.... I'm sure others, who aren't so photo saavy- likely won't be!
Thanks Lance!!!! Great thread!!!
Happy, humble, honored and proud recipient of the “You Suck” award 10/22/2014
I go right to the slab images when considering an online coin. Having done that, I was quite pleased with my Newman/Green wins. Particularly the 1861 Proof 1/2 dime.
I'm the guy who made the remark about photo quality after viewing the coins in-hand. I qualified my remark by saying I meant it to refer to coins with lustre. I might have qualified it further by saying Platinum Night images, though by no means limited to them. There were surely some very dusky coins, especially circs. Since most of your images wouldn't load for me, I have no reference points for comparison.
I wouldn't expect anyone to care much what I thought of the images online, but I found them very close to what I saw and was well-served by them. Evidently a major YMMV
But yes, the '96 25c image is way off. Didn't even notice. I disliked the coin from the moment I saw it in Heritage's case in Baltimore.
I thought the online images would be a useful reference for others who couldn't see the coins in-hand. Call me crazy (and/or blind), but I bought over 0.5 % of the sale.
I stand by my statement that the slab photos were generally waaaay darker than the actual coins.
edited to add: Having now seen your images, some of them are better than the HA images. My loss perhaps, but most of the coins you imaged were coins I wouldn't have looked at for more than 0.8 secs.
But... I just looked at a group of 6 of the less expensive ($1000-$5000) coins I bought. Grades are 62,62,63,66,PR66,PR67. In-hand they match up very well with their photos.
None of which has anything to do with your photographic skills, which are clearly quite advanced.
Edited again to add: Anyone who relies on catalogue or online images as a primary source of data deserves to lose all the money they inevitably will. Get SOMEONE to look at the coins for you. Otherwise you are diagnosable.
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." - Geo. Orwell
Right off the bat, the first image looks as if the Juice knob was at 10 and over-exposed. The image of the 1871 proof Quarter is flat out horrible. Thanks for putting forth the effort to assemble this. Great job with your images Lance.
Not that I'm judging (the first thing judgmental people say when masking an opinion as an observation), but I'm curious as to how many people here (besides the OP, Easton and myself, and I'm sure I left out someone else)) actually saw the coins in-hand? Sorry, I didn't check every post on this thread, but you know who you are. And I know you had fun.
And how many just like the self-righteous moral superiority of being a victim (real or imagined). .
If this offends anyone, then my work here is done. .
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." - Geo. Orwell
<< <i>This is really wonderful work. It proves one needs to examine a coin in hand and not trust images.
From a personal experience, Heritage takes great offense if one criticizes their images. Heritage exclaims "their images are not taken by coin people". I criticized a image after receiving a coin (it looked absolutely nothing like the image) and was severely rebuked by Heritage. One expects poor images from eBay, not Heritage. >>
When they post photos that are nearly white with pretty pastel colors and then you look at the coins in hand and they are nearly BLACK....that's just the dumbest thing to happen in numismatics, in my opinion of course. If someone did that on eBay, everything would be returned as SNADs...but for some reason Heritage gets away with this stuff. It makes no sense. If you look at the Stack's photos, they don't do this stuff. If you look at Goldberg auctions, they don't do this stuff either. If you look at Legend-Morphy, they don't do this stuff. It makes no sense. I have said this before and will say it again, the goal of a coin photographer needs to be to take ONE photo and get it to look as close to what the coin looks like in hand. THEN ....the auction description needs to pick up where the photos leave off... All imperfections need to be mentioned and all great features need to be mentioned. Simple...in my view.
"If it's not fun, it's not worth it." - KeyMan64 Looking for Top Pop Mercury Dime Varieties & High Grade Mercury Dime Toners.
Comments
As for me, with all the talk about this sale I thought I would have a look at the lots online. When I first saw the photos of the coins I realized why everybody was saying how much homework was going into making proper bids. I thought to myself that I've never seen any coins with that look in either decent Internet photos or actual coins in hand. Without piling on, I'll state its easy to overlook a tiny detail problem on a coin that looks solid and when photos like the ones that HA used leave too many questions unanswered, well, that's when I decided to pass. There are way more beautiful coins in the world than my money will cover without taking such a chance.
Lance, Thanks for confirming my suspicions
An amazing and extremely informative thread!
Thank you so much for making the effort and sharing the results. Your photography is supurb!
Confirms my concerns when viewing the photos of the recent auctions.
The huge red flag were the slab photos which clearly had some super dark coins and their stark contrast to the feature photos.
Brightening up the slab pics some and some white balance adjustment from there gave me a pretty good idea as to what the coin might really look like....
I'd be furious if I purchased some of those coins based on those blown out images!!!!
What a sickening wake up call would be had when that newP package was opened!!!
Thankfully my three legger Buffalo from their auction of about a month ago was spot on!!! So, I'm happy....
I'm sure others, who aren't so photo saavy- likely won't be!
Thanks Lance!!!! Great thread!!!
Happy, humble, honored and proud recipient of the “You Suck” award 10/22/2014
I like your photos the best.
Alarms should go off when the photo shows a coin radiating like the sun...
Thanks so much for it.
He who knows he has enough is rich.
I wouldn't expect anyone to care much what I thought of the images online, but I found them very close to what I saw and was well-served by them. Evidently a major YMMV
But yes, the '96 25c image is way off. Didn't even notice. I disliked the coin from the moment I saw it in Heritage's case in Baltimore.
I thought the online images would be a useful reference for others who couldn't see the coins in-hand. Call me crazy (and/or blind), but I bought over 0.5 % of the sale.
I stand by my statement that the slab photos were generally waaaay darker than the actual coins.
edited to add: Having now seen your images, some of them are better than the HA images. My loss perhaps, but most of the coins you imaged were coins I wouldn't have looked at for more than 0.8 secs.
But... I just looked at a group of 6 of the less expensive ($1000-$5000) coins I bought. Grades are 62,62,63,66,PR66,PR67. In-hand they match up very well with their photos.
None of which has anything to do with your photographic skills, which are clearly quite advanced.
Edited again to add: Anyone who relies on catalogue or online images as a primary source of data deserves to lose all the money they inevitably will. Get SOMEONE to look at the coins for you. Otherwise you are diagnosable.
And how many just like the self-righteous moral superiority of being a victim (real or imagined). .
If this offends anyone, then my work here is done. .
<< <i>This is really wonderful work. It proves one needs to examine a coin in hand and not trust images.
From a personal experience, Heritage takes great offense if one criticizes their images. Heritage exclaims "their images are not taken by coin people". I criticized a image after receiving a coin (it looked absolutely nothing like the image) and was severely rebuked by Heritage. One expects poor images from eBay, not Heritage. >>
When they post photos that are nearly white with pretty pastel colors and then you look at the coins in hand and they are nearly BLACK....that's just the dumbest thing to happen in numismatics, in my opinion of course. If someone did that on eBay, everything would be returned as SNADs...but for some reason Heritage gets away with this stuff. It makes no sense. If you look at the Stack's photos, they don't do this stuff. If you look at Goldberg auctions, they don't do this stuff either. If you look at Legend-Morphy, they don't do this stuff. It makes no sense. I have said this before and will say it again, the goal of a coin photographer needs to be to take ONE photo and get it to look as close to what the coin looks like in hand. THEN ....the auction description needs to pick up where the photos leave off... All imperfections need to be mentioned and all great features need to be mentioned. Simple...in my view.
Looking for Top Pop Mercury Dime Varieties & High Grade Mercury Dime Toners.
Like you, I didn't care for the 1796 quarter much
As far as the images - I was somewhat shocked when I received the catalog.