Camera And Parts Needed

Definitely better, sharper. I think the lens prefers f8 and it also gives better DOF.

No, brightness is the wrong handle. In DPP editor there is a "tone curve assist" with a small "assist" and a larger "+ assist". These are really just gamma corrections that brighten the darks and midtones. Use these instead of brightness, which just moves the whole curve up or down.

I'd suggest adding a bit of sharpness, but you may not like the result in my previous edit. I noticed no one commented! You could also add some saturation if the colors need a boost. Here is an example of doing all 3 of these simple changes: Tone curve + assist; Saturation +20% (120), Sharpness +10% (50). Experiment around, but keep an eye on your highlights and shadows to make sure you don't go too far either way.

Paint is good for special effects like overlays, arrows and text, etc. I've never used it for adjusting levels or sharpness.

No it has a nice shine to it, room to inprove

This one is overexposed. What did you do differently?

You'll just need to experiment with exposures, camera settings, lighting, and postprocessing to find an overall workflow that gives you what you see in the coin. One thing to keep in mind is that what you see in-hand would almost never look good as a photograph. The camera simply records what it "sees". If you like the look of a coin with a particular lighting angle, reproduce that angle with your photo setup and the camera will give you that image. If what you're looking for is areas of bright direct reflection from the light, the camera will give that to you as bright and over-exposed areas, and in that case my advice to turn down the Ev won't help you at all. Experiment and practice. And share your results, but tell us what you don't like. For instance, if all that you don't like about the last image is the dark areas, then you need to adjust the lights to shine off those areas more. Or add a reflector to bounce more light onto the coin from another angle. Or add another light. You'd be amazed what you can do moving an index card around the coin so that it bounces some of the light onto the dark areas. Give it a try!

Funky weather. You're getting rain, we're in a heat wave. 97-deg in my backyard yesterday.

mcshilling, you have now graduated and can move on to higher education. You have enough credit already to challenge Lighting101:basics, so you can move on to Lighting201:advanced techniques. The main content of this course is Advanced diffusion techniques (including reflection).

Most recently I've been looking into this as well, and I have a suggested method you might want to try. But I need to put a bit more work before publishing. In the meantime, you can do some pre-work by researching "directors", "smile" directors, and similar topics.