Problems Photogaphing Brilliant Clad Coins. Any Ideas?

I remember something being said about a "difuser", an item that smoothes the flashiness, like indirect lighting.

There's another problem with nolawyer's pic vs newbi's...nolawyer's lights are at too low an angle. The highlights are on the edges of the features, so that their edges are the brightest regions. This is opposite of what you want for an overall pic of a coin. You're looking for shadows on the edges, not highlights. Newbi's pic shows the concept well. The difference is the height of the lights and their angle relative to the coin. The higher the angle, the more the lights reflect off top surfaces and the more shadows show on the edges of the features. Of course, too many shadows make the feature edges too dark and contrasty, so you need to find the right height and angle to give the best "shadow detail".

The low angle lighting is used to pick up surface details, and is good for grading because of this. A setup that has some of both, ie lights positioned to give overall shadow detail, as well as surface finish details, is ideal for a single image representation of a coin. This is what the PCGS True View images try to achieve. Some people like them, others don't, but they do represent all aspects of the coin well.