It can be difficult to take coin pictures for online purposes because no camera can capture the true luster, details and overall beauty of a brilliant coin. However, with a little information the you can use the proper camera settings, lighting, and a little help from a photo editing software, and still honestly portray their coins in pictures.

You can do this with a inexpensive camera providing it at least has marco mode, but more on this later. Now, let’s take a look at a few coin picture examples.

Figure 1A, is a picture of an uncirculated Jefferson Nickel, and I used a Lexmark X75 to produce the scan. As can be seen, the scan appears unexciting and wouldn’t entice many collectors to bid. Figure 1B is a lightened version of Figure 1A, but in doing this I lost some of the details, and it still leaves a lot to be desired.

I’m sure a better scanner would produce better results, but I have yet to see a scanned coin display the correct detail or luster of any coin. I could have used photo software to further “improve” this scan, but then I would end up creating a coin scan that is far removed from the actual coin’s appearance. So, I wouldn’t recommend the practice of using scanned coins online. Read More
 
Figure 1A                  Figure 2A 

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