Kaleun96

Now that you mention it, it does seem like there should be a footstool there. Either that or the engraver messed up the proportions. My guess is that the proportions and pose suit a footstool similar to coins 4-5 in this figure, i.e. a fairly basic straight line and not the more Tarsiote-styled footstools with the pronounced "omega" legs (e.g. coin 1). It seems Price 195 has examples of both, footstool and no footstool, and they do tend to be the more basic type. I know Zervos and Troxell have discussed the footstool to some degree in regards to the earliest Alexander tetradrachms. I think Zervos argues it is more of an Eastern feature while Troxell readily admits there are prior examples from other Greek coinage, though the footstools are of different style. If I remember correctly, Troxell focuses more on the introduction and disappearance of the footstool on the earliest Amphipolis tetradrachms: they are found in Group A types, then only on a few dies in Group B types, and then disappear completely until Group F types, circa 325-323 BC. If I had to guess why they appear intermittently, my initial thought would be one engraver copying an existing coin that either had a poorly defined footstool or an off-flan footstool and then that was that. It would take a bit of time for that to permeate through the issues over the years via "random selection" and before long no one was engraving the footstool at that mint. Then, either due to an influx of Eastern-minted drachms of tetradrachms from returning soldiers, or some directive to adopt certain stylistic elements, the footstool begins to make a return. If one had the time and resources, I'm sure some more sense could be made of it all than what is currently known. As far as I know, no one has focussed specifically on the footstools either.

I should buy some grey filament and see how it does compared to the white. I think the white does, or can, lighten the edge too much but my current thinking (as of the last week or two) is to prioritise getting good edge-background separation and then add shadows to the edge either in the edit or, for transparent PNGs, I can add it with CSS on my website without affecting the underlying image itself (e.g. if downloaded from my site it would be without the shadowed/darkened edge). Been awhile since I've heard of the Yashinon, I never did try one of those. When I took a break from coins a couple of years ago, my focus was mainly on buying and testing all sorts of lenses (enlarger, industrial, etc) to try and find hidden gems. I did find a few but when Laowa came out with its 100mm f2.8 2x macro, it basically rendered them useless since it would be very difficult to beat Laowa's optical performance, not to mention its convenience. The again, the Laowa can be 10x the price of a decent enlarger lens that gets 99% of the job done. In case anyone else is thinking about enlarger lenses, this is a great database of some popular ones that can help you keep track of which ones to look out for: http://www.photocornucopia.com/1061.html

Love the Alexander tet! I bid on one (Price 200) myself recently at Heritage but was the underbidder. A fairly rare type, you don't see many of them. I'm particularly interested in this type because the feet of the throne legs flare outwards, almost as if they're depicting animal paws (lion paws would be my guess). I don't know if any other Alexander tets have throne legs with feet that flare out like this, I can't recall any of the top of my head. It gets more interesting when you look at the preceding types. They mostly have achaemenid throne designs but some examples exhibit clearly Greek thrones and then Price 199 seems to depict three "dots" below the drooping sepal "bell covers", almost as if they misinterpreted what the drooping sepals were. These three dots then seem to spread outwards on some Price 200 examples, which makes them look like the toes of some animal's paw. Achaemenid thrones are known to sometimes have a lion's paw as part of the leg but they are positioned above the drooping sepals, not below. On the other hand, it seems that the Greeks borrowed a lot of their furniture design from the Egyptians and it was common to see thrones with animal feet at the bottom of the throne legs. Price 199: Price 200: Now compare Price 200 with this Greek throne, probably from either late Archaic-early Classical period: "As an early sculptural example of this simple type one may cite the throne in a seated headless statue from Arcadia in the National Museum, Athens (fig. 45 ). Except for its lion paw feet and the projecting rectangular footstool, it is undecorated. [...] A specially handsome sculptural example of about this time [...] appears on a metope found in the Heraion of Foce del Sele, and now in the Museum of Paestun (fig. 44)." Source: Richter, G. 1966. The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans. Don't mean to hijack the thread, I just find this type in particular quite interesting!

No problem, glad we're on the same page again and we don't have to derail the thread any further! It will be great to see what you try next and how that affects your photos compared to your current approach. Whether someone is just using an iPhone or some complicated DSLR/Mirrorless setup, I'm always interested to see both the resulting photos and the setup used as there's often something to be learned even when you spend as much time taking photos of coins as we do. On the topic of "goals" when it comes to determining photo style, I do sometimes feel hamstrung by my aim for high resolution photos and sometimes take alternative photos that wouldn't work as well for that purpose (e.g. similar to Roma's alternative photos for higher end coins). But it's not something I do frequently at this stage and I'm not sure how I might present those on my website in addition to the high resolution "standard" photos. The tilt lens I mentioned earlier would be something that would let me explore that more I feel, as it may mean I don't need to focus stack those kinds of photos where the coin is photographed at a fairly decent angle. But for now, the two things i'm exploring more are: using transparent backgrounds for all my photos so I can switch out the background when desired (and maybe make an interface that lets people do this on my website), and eventually 3D models of some of my coins. I already have the 360 Photo tool on my site so the next logical step is full-on 3D models in high resolution but for that I need to modify my controller to add a second stepper motor for rotating the coin.

I've uploaded a few designs to Thingiverse but often only the ones that I feel are "finished". I think some of the ones I've shared here can probably go up though, at most they'll only need minor tweaks going forward. There are some that I don't think would ever be useful for someone else as they require specific gear, like this guide rail and carriage to move my coin along the Y axis, but I am often surprised when I see people download or "make" one of my designs that I thought would never be found. Totally agree, Denis produces some of the best commercial photographs of coins I've ever come across. He's made me revisit proper axial lighting setups (like the one in the image you attached) multiple times, though I could never get it to work well enough for me due to the optical degradation it introduces for the level of detail I like to work at.

Personally I try to adhere more to what Doug said earlier and let people shoot coins how they like and offer constructive feedback when asked that doesn't subtly push them to conform to my own personal tastes. I don't really understand why you see the need to specifically call out other people over their style of photos, especially when that type of feedback hasn't been asked for (i.e. non-constructive feedback about your personal tastes -- we can't do anything with what you have said). Although you say you're being blunt, you don't mention anyone by name but I suspect I'm being included somewhere given no one else except Doug and I have shared particularly "complicated" setups. So i'll assume you're including me there but if not, it would help if you are perhaps more blunt in the future. I have a feeling you have an axe to grind against "complicated" setups due to your anecdote and figure yourself as some auteur for dismissing the fancy bells and whistles and making do with your own two hands. That's all well and good, I have nothing against it personally, but you're also not any more likely to get better photos than if you strap it on to a linear rail and attach a motor to it. Holding a camera in your own hands isn't providing any magic touch to your photos, as you say we're only shooting simple coins that don't move. Everything you can achieve with a camera in your hands can be replicated with mechanical means - and to finer degrees. The story you mention about learning you didn't need multiple rails + a stepper motor etc also makes little sense to me. Either you go into that kind of project knowing it's saving you time but that you can replicate the results by hand if you wanted to, or you go into it knowing this is the only way to do it (which is the case for me). If you didn't know that upfront, I don't know what to tell you, but it's not the fault of complicated setups but a lack of understanding. My three main interests are perhaps loosely defined as ancient coins, photography, and various "maker" hobbies (electronics, coding, 3D printing, etc). Luckily, there's a way for them to all combine together and the result is my macro photography rig. I've been there and done that when it comes to shooting coins by hand but I want to push the boundaries in particular areas that you might not value but that I do value. Mainly, that's producing high resolution and detailed photos of coins that anyone online can browse without needing to download 50mb files or work with difficult interfaces. I like to think I've achieved that and I often hear that that particular part of my website is people's favourite because it offers them something not many other coin websites offer - a way to view and appreciate a coin that most people cannot do themselves, even with a loupe. Because high resolution is my goal, it is necessary that I use focus stacking. I don't know about you but I got pretty sick and tired of manually stepping a camera through sub-millimetre increments and taking a shot each time. I've shot many coins that way and it is enough of an inconvenience that it is worth automating if you do it often enough. Combine that with having an opportunity to learn new things about advanced stepper motor drivers, writing Arduino libraries for user interfaces, and designing and printing PCBs, it is a win-win for me to invest that time in a project, even if i'll spend more time working on the project than it will save me in photographing coins. But an automated focus stacking rig is not overkill for this purpose as you'll know, designing one yourself (rather than buying one) is perhaps a little but I like the challenge. But going back to my goal of high resolution images, this also determines how I want my photos to look. I don't want to distort the perspectives too heavily by tilting the coin more than 2-3 degrees. I don't want to add a reflection to the bottom of my images because that's taking up space and increasing the file size, forcing me to upload photos of the coin in a lower quality than I could otherwise without the reflection. I don't want too much "pizzazz" as that may obscure details on the surface or make the coin look too unnatural. My goal is always to photograph the coin in a way that reflects how it appears as its best when held in-hand. I may not particularly care for the style of your photos but these are your photos for your purpose. I don't know what your purpose is or what your photographic preferences are and I'm not going to assume they are the same as mine. We all have different means and goals, there's no one true way to photograph a coin. I could turn around and criticise the resolution of your images, the lack of detail, or the lighting style, and say that for all your talk of your handheld ability that "I'm just not seeing this in the resulting images". But I wouldn't say that because I don't assume that the criteria in which I photograph my coins is the same as yours. Perhaps you'll say you weren't addressing me at all and if that is the case then my comments above apply generally as to why "hand-held vs complicated setups" is a school boy's kind of argument to have and why not everyone wants to photograph something the way you might want to. I've heard good things about that book, though there is a lot of scientific literature online if you're looking for more "sparkles". In particular I'd recommend reading literature on imaging for industrial applications as they're often dealing with controlling light in very specific ways for specific goals. I'd also recommend buying some Lee polarising filter to give you that extra control over the reflectivity of your light in your scene.

Speaking of which, if anyone would like them I'm happy to share the .stl files for all the 3D printed parts I posted earlier.

Thanks! Nice setup as well. I've never bought one of those Nikkor enlarger lenses but have a bunch of others (Schneider, Rodenstock, etc). Definitely good value for money though. For others here that might be interested, enlarger lenses are a great budget option for coin macro photography and combined with a helicoid adapter like the one you have (I think mine might be the same too), you can get variable magnification so it can be useful for coins of all sizes. If anyone here has a DSLR/mirrorless but doesn't want to invest in a macro lens, I'm sure Heliodromus, myself, and others can recommend a good enlarger lens to buy in the $40-$100 range. If you have an existing lens in the 80mm or higher focal length, a good option can also be the Raynox DCR-250 close-up adapter that attaches to the end of your lens: https://www.amazon.com/Raynox-DCR-250-Super-Macro-Snap/dp/B000A1SZ2Y The magnification of these varies with focal length so are well-suited for zoom lenses.

As someone who has assembled a few franken-lenses myself, I'd love to see this! 😁 How did it damage the sensor, did you magnify light so that it focused it on a small concentrated area of the sensor or something? I don't think I've heard of someone damaging their camera this way so would be curious to know. Been awhile since I made a franken-lens myself, the most recent one was probably this one below that I used as a fish-eye macro lens.

Those photos really turned out nice! I think you've done well with the AE ones too, I get a good sense for how they would be in hand. I don't have any specific advice (as the photos all turned out well) beyond just experimenting. I think playing around with lighting, diffusing, tilting the coin, etc will help you find what works well and what doesn't work well - or even what works well for a particular need (e.g. showing off the relief). If you keep experimenting then you'll hone in on your "style" that illustrates the coin how you want it to look. I think everyone has a style, and it likely changes over time, so playing around with different variables before you start photographing the bulk of your collection is a good way to start IMO. I'm enjoying the discussion here too! It's sometimes surprisingly difficult to find people who have enough of an interest in coin photography to get into the details of both the art and science of it. Kirispupis has mentioned a few examples of the "science" side of things, e.g. freezing motion and exposing correctly with flash to get totally black backgrounds. And then the "art" side is more subjective and based in personal preference, like what equipment you use or your photographic style when it comes to lighting coins etc. It can be tough to give advice that doesn't encroach on someone else's style so I try to remind myself what advice I can give to solve specific problems without inadvertently pushing someone to adopt my photographic style under the guise of it being the "correct" way to do things. I went back-and-forth with using flash for coins myself but the past year or two I've been using flash almost exclusively. I would say it's trickier to control flash than a constant light source, and often more expensive too, but in the end you can get more control over your lighting by using flash. As Kirispupis has demonstrated, flash lets you manipulate the scene to your advantage in more ways than constant lighting allows. It does require some experimenting with to get the highlights and the harshness of the shadows under control without over-doing it with diffusion and making everything look soft.

I try to keep my advice as general as possible so while you can definitely do handheld macro (and I do all the time for insect macrophotography), I also keep in mind that not everyone is going to have the same gear, the same technical experience, or the same abilities. Even just considering the gear alone, there's many factors that will make one camera+lens combination much better at autofocusing for macro subjects than another. Beyond that, I think with some coins you're also going to be operating right at the limits of your DOF and you will need to nail the focus perfectly. Sure you can shoot a bunch of photos and pick the best one but for me it's an inconvenience I'd rather avoid. But to be clear, I don't think one needs a stand and handheld is perfectly viable, I would just say that in my experience when it comes to coin photography it is likely something you will want to invest in if you want to improve your photography. A stand is of course not required to improve but it takes so many things out of the equation that you no longer have to worry about, allowing you to focus more on the lighting or such. I agree that you often will want to tilt a coin slightly (you can see my device for doing so earlier in this thread) but there are times where that will not be possible due to DOF constraints - unless you're focus stacking. With pseudo-axial lighting setups, having the coin head-on as you describe, will actually produce the highest contrast and tilting the coin will reduce it. It is of course much easier to move a coin than the camera to get the right angle, both of which can done "live" so you can see the changes immediately but having to only move the coin will still likely leave you with a free hand to do other things, such as moving a diffuser while you tilt the coin. To me, all of those things you mentioned are perfectly possible with a stand setup, and IMO even easier, so I don't see how a stand has drawbacks in this regard. Not meaning to harp on as if stands are the be all, end all, I just disagree that you've mentioned any benefits to handheld that can't be achieved with a stand to the same degree or, in many cases, better. As I mentioned, if you're correctly exposed and have the flash settings dialled in you should be fine, but not everyone here will want to learn all the nuances of photography even if they are shooting coins with a DSLR. IMO a lot of people struggle with controlling flash (or light in general) so to most people starting out, they may have trouble freezing motion with flash while using other lights. It can definitely be done, I'm just thinking about what is the best advice for a general audience and taking into account their likely equipment, knowledge, and will to faff about with lighting. I probably shouldn't have used ambient light to describe a fill light as they are different but I did mention fill lights and you will have trouble freezing motion while using a fill light and flash. If the fill light does nothing then it's fine as the flash is the only thing exposing the image but then you can just throw away your fill light because it's not needed. However, if you do want your fill light to do something, then it is exposing the image and the flash won't freeze motion on its own. I mentioned fill lights with ambient light because they result in the same problem: if you need a constant light source to help light the scene in addition to the flash, then you can't freeze the motion with flash alone.

I agree that a flash is a great tool to have but I think a stand is also important beyond just helping freeze motion, mainly for consistency and ensuring the lens is perpendicular to the coin. And as you could still get a decent photo of a coin without focus stacking between 0.5x to 1x, I would couldn't that "very high magnifications" and, depending on the DOF and relief of the coin, you will probably have trouble ensuring you're perfectly in focus while holding the camera, even with the help of focus peaking or focus assist. I think there's a lot of stands you can make or buy that don't take up much space or are easy to take apart and hide away too. So for me, a stand (or tripod) is one of the first pieces of equipment I would recommend someone buying if they plan on improving their coin photography with a DSLR or mirrorless. Not to say that it can't be done without a stand, as you've clearly shown it can, I just think there are too many benefits to a stand such as consistency, staying perpendicular to the coin, freeing your hands for other things, making it much easier to dial in the focus perfectly, and saving your arms from holding a heavy camera+lens and potentially any camera mounted lighting or flashes. A stand also gives you something to mount flashes, monitors, magic arms, or whatever else to, which helps with setup time and organisation too. A big reason I bought the Thorlabs 66mm optical construction rails is because the dovetails are ARCA-clamp compatible, meaning I can lower the footprint of the stand by clamping things to its structure rather than needing to have them attached to a larger base or take up a bigger footprint on my working surface. It does depend on the ambient light too, though. If you're correctly exposed for the scene where the coin will be illuminated and the background dark then you should be OK but if you have a lot of ambient light (e.g. a fill light) then it's not going to work as well. And if you don't have a flash, then you do need to use the shutter speed to freeze the motion and most people are probably going to have a hard time lighting the scene with a fast shutter speed and high aperture without going crazy with the ISO.

Thanks! I suspect I have some similar 2nd grade doodads laying about in a box somewhere as well 😄 3D printers have been quite a revelation for my hobbies in this regard, no more trawling the aisles of hardware stores in search of "something", where you're not sure what that "something" is, just what is needs to do. You could probably make some 45 degree cones out of diffusion gel or paper card using one of these template generators. I think that would've been my alternative had I not 3D printed them instead. You might be able to find one that lets you specify the angle of the cone but you can also work it out with trigonometry. I think it worked out that for a 45 degree angle, the height of the cone should be equal to half the difference in diameter between the top and bottom openings. So one of my cones has a 55mm diameter opening at the top and a 35mm diameter opening at the bottom and the height of the cone is 10mm, which is half of the 20mm difference in diameters. Gel diffusers definitely help with the contrast problem, the main trick is to get distance between the light source and diffuser. The further away the diffuser is from the light source, the better it will do at diffusing the light. Though it's easy to have too much diffused light and that can give a bit of a dull and matte look to surfaces of coins. But I find having the diffuser far away is best when I just want a bit of "fill" light to brighten and soften everything up a touch but not too much. If the diffuser was closer to the light, I'd probably get bright spots from the fill light in that 4th image from above, which can be quite distracting. As for AE, I find I use much more diffused light then I would for silvers. In the photos below, the darker one was taken with a ring light and no fill light, if I recall correctly, which produced this nice dark colour but I ended up not liking it due to it being so contrasty. The brighter photo is the current one I'm using for that coin and I probably used a mix of ring light and fill light -- but with a lot of fill. It really brought out the colours in the patina and brightened the portrait but I would also say it's a bit more distracting to the eye as well. There are some pros and cons to both and I tend to alternate between styles every now and then. I don't have any tetartemoria yet but I did recently print a 5th coin mount thingy with a diameter of about 7mm, which is suited for diobols and hemidrachms.

Lastly, here's some photos to show you what some of these accessories do. The first photo is using the top-down light with two flashes and nothing else - no cone around the coin or diffusion of any sort. The contrast is quite high with slight shadows around all the details of the devices but there's not quite enough light on the face, top of the head, or edge of the coin. The second photo adds one of the white cones around the coin to illuminate the edges. It also lightens some of the relief very slightly, not not quite enough. The third photo is without the cone but with some diffusion gel around half of the coin. This really brightens parts of the portrait, noticeably the top of the head and the face but the edge is once again mostly in darkness. The fourth photo combines the white cone and the diffusion gel to get the best of both worlds. These are all raw photos straight out of the camera and aren't necessarily how I would photograph this coin but I think it illustrates well what some of these accessories can help with.

Now on to the lighting. I mostly use two Godox TT350 speedlites that I've made an adapter for that mounts to the front of my lens, making the flashes act more like a ring light with light coming from top-down onto the coin. I've made a couple of these adapters of varying sizes and configurations, experimenting with things like the diameter of the outer and inner holes, ways to help reflect more light down onto the coin, and ways to improve the evenness of light around the whole "ring". The one attached to the camera is my smaller one suited for denarii and smaller coins. It has an inner diameter of about 33mm and outer diameter of 65mm. The adapter not attached to the camera is a newer version I printed just this weekend. It's larger at 40mm inner diameter and 78mm outer diameter, which provides more light overall but isn't well suited for smaller coins as the inner hole is too wide to illuminate them with direct light. In this version I also added magnets to the side so I can more easily attach a diffuser or polariser when needed.

Next up, a few small accessories to give the coins something to sit on and to help illuminate their edges evenly with top-down lighting. I've made four little round adapters of varying diameters that can thread into the 8mm threaded knob mentioned earlier. An o-ring is glued to the top of each to provide some friction to help hold the coins when tilted and also to give room to high relief coins so they're able to lay flat. I've also printed three white cones with 45 degree angled surfaces to reflect light coming from top-down onto the edge of the coins. I can use the threaded knob to adjust the coin up-and-down relative to these cones so that they don't illuminate any high relief parts of the coin, only the edges. In the last photo, you can also see me using some white diffusion gel around half of the coin. This diffusion gel slots into a plastic ring that fits inside the rest of the coin platform and lets me easily control how much diffusion I want to use. Sometimes I will use it with an off-axis light to help illuminate certain parts of the coin (e.g. faces of high relief portraits) when my top-down lighting isn't quite doing the job. Though often it works well enough with the top-down lighting to throw a bit more light into the parts I need it to. The diffusion holder rotates freely in the coin platform so it's easy to position it where needed.

On the off chance that it might be useful to others, I thought it would be worth sharing some of the accessories I've made to help with photographing my coins. Most of these accessories I designed and 3D printed myself but there's a lot you can still do without a 3D printer (I only got one last year). Before printing my own accessories, I would try to make them out of all sorts of different things. There are quite a few photos here of different things so I'll split this up into a couple of posts. First up, is the assembly I use for holding my coins below the camera (which is mounted vertically). I've attached it to a little base just to make it easier to see, usually it's bolted to an aluminium plate below the camera. The main components are the horizontal and vertical rods, the clamp that connects them, and the platform that supports the coin itself. The rods and clamping adapter are Thorlabs 1/2" post products and not exactly cheap but I had them left over from something else. They give me more degrees of freedom than I really need, namely: vertical, swivel, and tilt. I mainly used it for the tilting ability (see 2nd photo). The round coin platform is plastic and 3D printed. It has a knob with an 8mm thread to attach itself to the platform and hold the coin. It is threaded so I can use it to rotate the coin independently of the rest of the platform. The platform is backed with black felt to provide a dark background but I've also made an insert more recently to hold a round mirror, which I've been experimenting with earlier in this thread.

For me it was the CoinCraft store opposite the British Museum back in 2017. I have a vague recollection I was actually seeking out coin stores with ancients at the time but I can't recall what gave me that idea. I ended up picking up my first ancient then, a tetradrachm of Azes, that I then sold 3 years later in CNG e496. I think I just about made my money back, which is not bad considering CoinCraft isn't the cheapest of retail stores.

I agree with what has already been said about reddit, CoinTalk, and NumisForums so no need for me to repeat things. Facebook - I deleted my account a few years ago and have no desire to go back. Meta's other products (Instagram, WhatsApp) are already pushing me away by the day with their tactics to increase "engagement". Discord - This one has been a bit of a revelation as I never thought it would work well for coins but that was probably because I had mostly come from forums and reddit. It has ended up being my main focus and the most enjoyable place for me to chat about coins. The main server for ancients is quite popular now and it does suffer a little bit from what the r/AncientCoins subreddit turned into but it's great for following auctions, seeing new coins everyone has bought, and asking questions about all sorts of things that you may not normally want to start a thread about. You can also easily create group chats with a small number of users to discuss topics in more depth. The main server has a buy & sell channel, a write-up channel, and a Top 10 Coins of the Year channel for the annual event in December where you are assigned a specific day in which only you will share your top 10. The downsides of Discord are obvious. As it's more suited for free flowing conversations it can be difficult to have multiple conversations on different topics in the same "channel" (e.g. "Greek Coins") at the same time. It's also not as good of a historical resource where you can go back and easily find discussions about certain topics. It is possible but usually requires you to have been present in the conversation originally so you know what to search for. But I think that's why it complements participating in a forum quite well, they each have their pros and cons.

Picked up this Amyntas III diobol from Solidus the other week. It's tiny at 11mm and 1.2g with very crystalised surfaces but it looks great at 2x magnification!

I've got one that has been sitting in Australia "booked for flight" for over a month now 😅 Though it seems Australia's post has been affected more than most. I don't even think the USPS delays from last year due to the Chicago international service centre going to sh*t resulted in delays as long as I'm seeing with Aussie post.

I think the key here might be "local shipping numbers" and what you mean by that. If you ask your local post service to ship an item internationally with full tracking, they will probably use EMS if they don't have a bilateral agreement and there should be no issue tracking a parcel in the US if sent with the right EMS service. If you only send via your local post's "registered letter" service then you are probably dependent on their international agreements. It looks like Poland's post only offers tracking to US under its "GLOBAL Expres" service or via its partnership with EMS. I don't mean to go down the rabbit hole of international postal services, I just wanted to point out that it all comes down to the service you pay for and long delays with no tracking is well-known from carriers on both sides of the Atlantic. edit: here's an example from Sweden's PostNord just to help illustrate what I'm talking about. Registered Letters are not tracked by default in the US (mainly just in the EU) but they offer two other services (International Tracked Letter and EMS) if you do want tracking state-side. So it's not that it can't be done just because Sweden doesn't have an agreement for normal registered mail, you just have to pay extra for it.

If I recall correctly, this isn't a Spanish post, or even a European post, issue but just related to what service has been paid for. You can pay for at least two types of tracking: tracking with the postal agent and its delivery partners, or just tracking with the postal agent, which usually only works until the item leaves the country. Often the second one is used to save money but it's kind of useless for the recipient. I've had some mail sent via USPS work like that too, as soon as it reaches Europe the tracking stops. I've also had the postal service where I live (Sweden) offer it as an option when I was posting something to the UK. I think it may have even been included in the lowest shipping option by default since everything is digital anyway it probably costs them virtually nothing to include tracking updates until it is handed over to a delivery partner. Maybe Cayon will let you pay for full tracking? When I bought from a Spanish dealer once they gave me the option of paying for one or the other and the price different was only a few dollars but of course that was for within-EU.

Cool idea! I'd personally put Nomos down into the A or B tier due to their tendency to overexpose and not control the highlights, I'd bump Roma up to B tier, maybe put Hess Divo in A tier and drop CNG down to B. The last one just because I think Hess is better than CNG. If considering Roma's "alternative" photos for the higher end coins separately, I'd probably put them up into A or S tier because they make the coins look great. But the main things I judge auction photos on are probably: resolution, exposure+highlights, and how attractive they make the coin look. Kuenker seems to show every little fault and flaw in their coin, which is great for signalling the issues to perspective buyers but I think it makes them look worse than they really are. And by "resolution" I should probably say "ability to resolve detail" as some auction houses have decently sized images but the coins are out of focus or just up-scaled from lower resolutions.

Wow what a collection! I think it looks well organised and while it might be considered "crowded" if it were in a museum, you also don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on cabinets and display cases and take over an entire room, so you've struck a good balance. Have you considered installing some LED light strips or similar for inside the cabinets?