dougsmit

Also consider that large silver coins were circulated much less than small silver and bronzes simply because they were a lot of money. It is like $100 bills last longer than $1 bills. Most big denominations were used in banking and to pay large debts like land deals. That means they were stored in bulk in pots and cared for like the big things they were. Bronzes made daily transactions and could be spent a dozen times in a day. I'd be shocked to find a large pot full of Hexas denominations while it would be reasonable to find a pot with a thousand tetradrachms - all in mint state. Big silver will always be expensive but the combination of all these factors will make perfect bronzes a lot harder to find.

It makes me glad to see others appreciate coins not in mint state. As far as Syracuse goes my favorite is an ugly silver hexas (1/6 of a litra or 1/120 of your coin) which weighs a bit under .01g (partly due to the peeling surface) and is 8mm in diameter. I've never seen a nice one in person but suspect I could not afford it.

Give Westair a break. The ask a pound and a half for this coin blister packed with a booklet on Caesar for sale in museum gift shops. Their WRL is clear. The problem is when someone decides to try to pass it off as something that sells for 100 times as much even if the flan is broken enough that you could get rid of the WRL. People buy them as souvenirs and there is nowhere you can get one of these for anything approaching the price. It would make an interesting study for sociology students to follow the path these coins take from holiday mementos to greed and deception.

I buy coins I like at a price I can afford. A problem with ancients is that there are many 'common' types that come up for sale rather infrequently and way too many to even think of owning them all. You need to buy them when you can or be comfortable with not having the opportunity again for a while. Specialized collections hit a wall in a short while where you go for periods without adding anything to your collection because you have all the easy ones. My Eastern Denarii of Septimius Severus specialty gained only two coins in 2009. For that reason I suggest everyone have two collections. One is whatever specialty interests you and one of coins outside your area of interest that for some reason you found appealing. Most ancient collectors are serial specialists and will add or change topics every so often. I have found that the coins I added to my 'unspecialized' grouping helped define the next direction I would head with my specialty collections.

I like this last one but probably for the wrong reason. It does not appear as red. Compare the Carinus to the same one above. I believe the balance is the same but the color satutation is now lessened so it looks more natural. This entire project wins or loses depending on a couple factors. The information is great but all the blank space reduces the size of the coins to a point we lose detail. That bothers me as it is presented but the complaint goes away when we bring up the larger and largest images offered. The shots all remind me of things prepared for very high end auction catalogs and would make nice cover shots for that sort of use. Coin after coin, page after page, I find the effect less pleasing. It is rather like the idea of the 3/4 angle shots - some coins benefit while others do not. Similarly some coins benefit from an enlarged inset while others are best shown as a whole, flatly lighted and filling all the space available. This series has been very interesting and does make me want to try some different things. Except for a few 'educational' shots like the ones below, most of my images have been boring mug shots compared to yours.

This is interesting. I first viewed this page using Firefox. Today I went back and saw no differences (things were still red). I tried viewing the page using Internet Explorer and color improved but I still must say I have not seen a Carus period coin as red as that obverse. I'm wondering if my system buffered your original images and did not update when I revisited but IE saw the new versions since it had not been there before. There is always room of opinion on color balances and there is nothing to say both of our monitors are calibrated exactly. I have a page of images processed over a period of years so there will be variations. Doug Smiths coins Do you (or your wife) see these as excessively cyan/green? Do these seem to vary all over the place or do you see them as consistently off color in one direction?

Color blindness explains it. Perhaps the answer would be to select the coins individually and use an auto color control on each. You could also select a neutral spot on the coin and adjust so the color values match but that requires careful selection of the spot to be read with the eyedropper tool. I selected a spot in the reverse field of your Carus and got a reading of a9aaac suggesting it was pretty neutral. A similar position on the obverse field read b9a6ac suggesting excess red. In all honesty, if I were you I'd work in Black & White but that is a personal choice.

For so much effort expended it bothers me that you did not color correct. On my screen, the reverse of the Carus looks decent but everything else is red. I have no use for the edge reflection as used on the Gallienus and even less love for the blank space at the top but I do like the Crus style reflection showing the axis. Overall, I suspect the contrast may be just a little more than necessary but it is always hard to say where to draw the line on that. As general rules, I tend to over contrast and over saturate colors and find I like it better when I back off. Especially when using coins with less than perfect surfaces (as with 99.9% of silvered ants), a little soft lighting and restrained contrasts can be easier on the eye. Except for the red color, these are better than 90% of the coin photos we see. Light angles are good and they show care in presentation. Just opinions.