rasiel

One would really have to be very full of themselves to think one more important than the other. And satisfaction is subjective 😉 Really, I think of it more like a spectrum. We all start out as collectors and the second we start learning about the subject matter we begin straying towards scholarship. Most everyone is somewhere on that scale. Rasiel

Just the top half of one of those plastic coin capsules. Just something that was within reach lol. Seriously, you could get honest-to-god pro quality shots with well less than $100 worth of used gear on ebay. Any old point and shoot camera with a dedicated macro setting, a cheap desktop tripod and a lamp with a 5000k light. And for the love of all that is holy pleeeease use a white background. Or at least black. It will help your camera autofocus and color correct better and your pics will look have that clean "auction house" look. Bonus: if you have a rarity it could end up being published and it will greatly help the editor to have the clean background. Rasiel

Oh come on! No excuse. How's this for a quick and dirty setup? Do a test shot.. And it's, uh, passable quality This is all quite "ghetto" but could be improved pretty easily. And costs nothing. Rasiel

I use a Google spreadsheet to track my bids and it's been a real handy tool. Among other data points it keeps track both of postage costs as well as length of time to deliver. In my experience Spanish auctioneers are the worst on both counts. Anyway, if anyone would like a blank copy happy to share! Rasiel

If I hadn't been so naive I would have I'd have bid much more aggressively on that Soaemias. It's possible I would have gotten it had I bid 10x est which is what I typically do when I throw caution to the wind. It's as far as I can tell the most detailed portrait of hers in any denomination. It would have made an excellent mother-daughter combo for my Maesa Rasiel

Also on Coryssa. The whole of Gnecchi! 🙂 https://coryssa.org/coins/903656?p=13&s=all&c=64&q=Gnecchi &qf[]=title&p0=&p1=&w0=&w1=&d0=&d1=

That's an impressive piece of detective work. Well done ;- ) Rasiel

Scoring good bronze from this century is an achievement, well done! The best portraits are (hardly surprisingly) reserved for the gold. I recently added this one but there are extraordinary folles that are more sought after than these generic solidi. Rasiel

Same here! I wish them the best. Love my latest win from Roma :- ) Rasiel

It's a great strategy if you don't actually want to win them but if you do, ok, cool! If I wait til the last minute it's on (and then buyer's regret ensues) Rasiel

I have bids going well into the five figures but (realistically) don't expect to win anything. For example, these guys are smoking crack if they think that little Constantine XI is overpriced at the opening bid of 6k. I'd be surprised if it goes under 20! Rasiel

I don't even own a Nero. Y'all's rich folk! Rasiel

Funny how these things go! At one point a couple years back I was wrestling with whether or not I should get one of these for engraving metal. CO2 lasers you can get off Amazon pretty cheaply but are finicky and don't do a great job (or maybe not at all when it comes to metal) but the cheapest fiber lasers ran nearly 5k. In the end I decided not to and just outsourced the job and glad I didn't but the nerd in me still wishes I had one to fart around with 😅 Rasiel

Oh this was ten years ago. All that stock photo portfolio gets turned over frequently. I'm sure it can be retrieved from web archive. Here's a couple

Beautiful, top end work! Hats off. You should get an award for that last one. I did some shots for JM Bullion a few years ago. Big chunky bars. Not fun for me but it was sobering to hold six or seven figures in one hand 😅 Rasiel

Anatomy of poor technique Here's a coin I've shot twice, and twice failed. It's nothing to do with it being gold. The main problem is sub-optimal lighting. When you look at any gold or no toning silver coin look at the darkest and lightest areas. A successful shot should still have details at both extremes. In the top photo not only do I have areas that lose some detail but overall the fields are flat and unevenly lit (though the flan is a bit wavy to be fair). Moreover, in my excitement at getting a prized entry I've rushed it to the photo station before taking a minute to clean some lint that was clinging on. In the bottom photo I've improved the evenness of the lighting on the fields but I've blown the highlights again and made the dark ones darker still. It's also a touch out of focus. And there's still a bit of lint. This aureus deserves better! I'll have to take it in for a third attempt. Luckily, for me at least, getting quality shots is part of the fun of collecting and handling them for the photo sessions is after all an opportunity to you know, be with them again! Rasiel

Man, that's a hell of a coin. Wish I had it for just a couple minutes to do it justice! You can't even be bothered to take it out of the plastic 😅

Hell of a shot! (and a rare opportunity too) Rasiel

Here ya go!

And this is Magnentius as a sofa (wouldn't fit into previous message). Anyway, where'd she come from? This is just weird. I do think it's a killer sofa for what it's worth 😅 Well, that's enough silliness for today :- ) Rasiel

Just messing around with Photoshop tonight and I thought... what if I asked its AI to make fuller scenes based on the portraits? I started with this Licinius II and a few seconds later it came up with Ah, cool he's, uhh... running into battle. Let's clean this up and zoom out a bit Whooaaa!! Licinius' kid has horse DNA. He turned into a minotaur with a serious case of folliculitis. Better get that looked at. Let's switch tracks. How about my Julia Maesa denarius? What does she inspire? LOL! While I empathize with the scene of Maesa in a conga line I think it's a bit unseemly for an empress, no? Let's try again Ah, heh, yeah, I can see how she has that Victorian look. Give me more! This is pretty cool actually. To me it recalls maybe a Whistler painting leaning into surrealism. Finally, let's take a look at my solidus of Magnentius. What do you see here, Photoshop? Haha! Well, to be honest he does have a somewhat saintly look about him. Ok Photoshop, run with this. Dial it up a notch! Whoaaaaaaaaa!! Photoshop went too far. That's turning the dial to 11! I don't think I can look at my Maggie the same way again LOL Turn him into a sofa Photoshop. Yes, a sofa.

Thank you all for the kudos! Donna: no, as of now no pre-2000 eBay records. In fact, the earliest ones are from 2008 😞 I can buy the data from eBay but last time I checked it was extortionate

No sir :'-( Sorry. However, even back when the last records were being added I was already struggling to add filters effective in stopping the fakes and low value dregs. Three years later and it's at least three times worse. If I restart I might have to do something drastic like cherrypick the handful of good accounts still selling. It really can't be automated at this point without a lot of constant pruning.

No, actually the opposite: ACSearch, CoinArchives and Coryssa largely overlap for auction house sales for the period 2000-2020. There's basically zero after 2020 on my site so you'll need to use the others for recently closed auctions until I can catch up. On the other hand, Coryssa is as far as I know the only site to have a significant amount of pre-2000 lots. ExNumis.com has a large database but is (I think) only for internal use. Rasiel

The problem isn't gold. There's nothing about the physics of light that makes yellow shades more challenging to capture than other wavelengths. Scyphates are a bitch though. This is because it's very difficult to get even lighting across the coin. The convex side's north rim typically blocks the light while while the bulge in the concave side obscures the opposite angle. There are several solutions to this problem. You can just work from a farther distance to allow the light source to be positioned such that light can cover more of the surface, you can diffuse the light source to make the lighting less directional (and thus minimize risk of clipping the highlights), you can add a secondary light. Or you can just live with not having all the coin areas properly lit. This is one of mine. Not going to win any awards fo' sho' And here's one of my two Constantine V's which is much better done (using the same setup) and representative of about the best I can do with my expertise and equipment. Rasiel