Picture Critique And Advice, Please

Thanks, ASEnut.

OK, first make sure the coin is not rotated. Reverse is fine but obverse is rotated CCW. Date should be centered at 6:00.

Next, the contrast is still a bit low...

Finally, there are quite a few blown-out highlights. Since you have no crushed blacks, you can drop the exposure a bit to keep the highlights from blowing out. Or, you can add some diffusion to your lights, but if your camera is pushing highlights to white it will probably just increase overall exposure and blow out even more areas. Best is to turn down the exposure a bit.

Try shooting with lower exposure. Your boosting the contrast may have resulted in more blown out areas, but same time your contrast is still too low even on edited photo! The image should have the full available dynamic range on the coin.

I also tried a few quick things with your first pic. I saw that the highlights were being blown out, so I took down highlights and increased contrast in the midtones where the coin looks "flattest". I don't have your coin to compare--does it help any?