Scanning Coins

Hi Whisk and welcome to the group! There is a lot of experience and expertise among the membership and everyone is willing to share it with all.

Given that scans of coins don't show a coin's luster as well as a digital photograph and scans tend to exaggerate a coin's imperfections while also presuming a suitable digital camera isn't available, there's a few tricks to scanning a coin. Not all of us are in full agreement with each other, so I'll just pass along my own preferences.

I prefer a dark (black) background for a coin scan since it minimizes unwanted reflection. A high resolution (600 dpi or higher) is desirable followed by use of an editing program (I use Graphic Converter, available for all platforms) to get an image's size down to uploadable size. I've also learned the hard way that a lesser expensive scanner with only 16-bit color will not produce the same quality images of a higher bit (32 or 48-bit). There also is a lack of depth of field, especially with encapsulated coins in a low-bit and less expensive scanner.

Take scans of coins in color (highest color settings possible), not greyscale. Also, some people tip a coin or slab up very slightly to gain depth of field. Some coins just will not scan well at all no matter what settings are used.

There's probably a lot more tips all of us can offer, but if you can give us specific questions or maybe an example, we can go from there.

All that said, a decent quality digital camera will out-perform a scanner any day, but of course, will cost more and will require a lot of practice to produce a good coin image.

Hope this gets you started.

Fred

Actually, some coins scan really well, just depends on the scanner. Try to keep the DPI up fairly high(above 400) and play around with the settings. Some scanners do a great job with copper and gold, but hardly ever with silver.

Here is a couple of examples, all scans....





Circulated silver doesn't scan too bad.....




But MS must reflect the light back too much......



Cameras are far better at depicting a coins true image, but scanners are way easier.