Heritage enhanced photo's?

[Leothelion]

Hi everyone,

Anyone care to add? I bet the 1939 proof fields are not as jet black as the pic suggests. See attachment.

 

Leo

[TomB]

I don't think they are enhanced. Recently, Heritage went to a new system of image capture and I think it was away from scanning and toward digital. By doing this there is a difference in how the images look. I am still not used to interpreting their coins yet.

[Leothelion]

Hi Tom

Clearly, extra light was used on the 1938, where as, the entire slab of the 1939 is very dark. Perhaps they were highlighting the frost or contrast to boost the sale of this proof. Earlier this year, I bought a PR66 of the same date, rev of 1940, through the FUN Heritage auctions. But in that description my coin was descibed to have deep mirrors which it did not. The mirrors are not mentioned in this auction for this 1939 proof. How does a collector know what he's buying? It's obvious, the photos don't help much.

 

Leo

[keithdagen]

Leo,

 

To the best of my knowledge, Heritage does NOT doctor images. Remember that for their typical auctions, they have to process as many as 5 or 6,000 coins. Under normal circumstances, they use a flatbed scanner and scan all the coins in the auction. For select high end coins, they also take the "up-close" digital photographs for the plates.

 

The differences in the two nickels could be easily attributed to being scanned at two different points in time, or on two different scanners. Heritage has experimented with more digital photography techniques, as well as different scanning techniques, but overall, they have not been successful yet in getting those pics to look good. All the coins ended up looking dull and lifeless.

 

The scanner I have at home made all my proof coins look like the coin on the left, regardless of amount of cameo, and to a lesser extent, can still do it with clad MS pieces that have little to no toning.