Scanner - Camera and Other Thoughts

I've been looking at the photos submitted on many listings and this leads to several obversations. First, those pictures taken using a camera generally have some problems with bright spots ( Flask reflecting off the card) or have terrible angles since the camera was not perfectly perpindicular to the card or , since the card is not held flat, distortions with cards that have curvature in them. In many cases, the picture is less than useless in trying to visualize the card. A good quality scanner wwhich costs about $ 100 will solve those problems. Granted, a camera is a must for 3-dimensional objects such as figures, etc., but for basic flat cards, it is really not that great.

As far as other thoughts, I brought this up on the VIP board quite a while ago but I wanted to bring it up here. That is the use of multiple cards showing in a single scan. In my opinion this does no good because the card being sold can't even be seen by anyone over the age of thirty-five or so and probably not by too many under that age. If you are going to submit a picture with a listing, don't be so lazy that you can't shoot a single one of the card you're selling. The only time it is appropriate to include more than one card in the picture is if more than one card is being sold as a lot.

Okay, any comments about either of these issues - scanner vs. camera or multiple cards vs. single cards in the picture.

Way in the past we would put 2 or 3 items on a image as it is easier and the scanner we had was slow. Most scanners today average 15 seconds per scan.. We didnt like it but it did save time.

But is is confusing to the potential buyer and we have stopped doing it. Customer think they are getting what is in the image, even though it says stock photo and the listing is for a single card.

We now have a VERY FAST scanner with a document feeder and we scan 1000s of cards each week and on the flat bed, its 2 secs / scan and we cant keep up with it.

Rule of thumb we use ...

1) Single scans, when we do them.
2) We do not replace or put our seller scan there if there is a good Stock Photo - no need to ruin a good stock image aleady in place
3) Try to do stock image on all newer EL CL base sets.

#2 is really a pet peave. To many times newer sellers take a BAD image with a camera and not a scanner and then use it as their seller image. it replaces a quality stock image.

Also, we do not like sellers taking a base listing and putting up an image of a game used or autographed card on a base listing. They either do not know the difference or are too lazy to cretae a proper listing.

its 90F in Florida on Oct 31st. GEEZ!