Seated Dollar: MS Or AU

Is it Opposites Day?

And the grade:




And I didn't forget about you Stacks loyalists. Here is Stacks picture:

Break it out and put it in my 7070.

(A little pricey for me though!)

I'd take the Stacks coin but not the one from GC!

Sure.

As far as the Stacks doctoring photos statement, it's just flat out wrong. Stacks nor do any of the three elite auction houses (Heritage, Legend, Stacks) doctor photos. David Lawrence doesn't doctor photos either but they do use scans for lower value things. None of the reputable places actually doctor photos.

Doctoring photos means that someone is taking images then editing them to remove flaws to try and sell the item for more. Really doctored pictures would be considered fraud. That just simple does not happen.

Accuracy of images and doctoring photos are two completely different things. As far as which images are more accurate, there is SOOOOO much light being blasted on those GC images that it is almost impossible for it to be more accurate. I can't think of a single environment where someone would be looking at it in hand with that much light hitting it unless you were laying on a bed of mirrors on a sunny day.

That set up would have produced a nice image for a toned Morgan or ASE, but to me a lot of their images are very over lit. That seems to be a theme with a lot of their images in recent history and from selling with them in the past I know I have been less than pleased with the images on more than one occassion. I had thought their pictures were improving until a while ago where the lighting appears to have been cranked up and never adjusted for non toners.

Which brings us to the other point about accuracy. Every house has a limited amount of time to image things before they're losing money with a backlog trying to get it right. Legend probably gets the best results being the boutique having fewer things to deal with. Stacks and Heritage and many of the others take the time to write out descriptions of their listings and generally make an effort to get things accurate. Most of their consignors have weight and are bigger fish so they have to keep up a higher level of service for those types of clients. The delay between listing and auction time also gives those consignors the ability to raise a fit if they think a picture needs to be redone.

Welcome back Baseball and thanks for the very helpful response!

basebal21: Always look forward to your educational and informative posts. One good reference I have
found very useful is Mark Goodmans Numismatic Photography. This publication has certainly helped me
understand the nuances of taking quality photographs.