A rant - adequate pictures/scans

[Penguin101]

More often than not, visiting ebay or someones bucket the pictures of the card is not sufficent to judge what shape the card is in.

In a lot of cases it's a matter of the image has been cropped so that one or more corners is not in the picture. When I see such an image I think for myself, is there a reason for this, is there something to hide?

In other cases it's a white card vs a white background with lots of lightning, this sometimes makes it very tough to make out edges / corners.

I'd say that more oftan than not the pictures of a card is not adequate because of the person taking it than caused by a bad camera / scanner.

If I'm to spend $$$ on a high-end card I need a clear high res image that makes it easy to see what condition the card is in. It's not that hard to produce such an image and I think both seller and buyer would benefit.

I just had to vent after spending 2 hours on ebay just to see most of the cards I was interested in had insufficent pictures.

/rant off

[gladdyontherise]

i totally agree, sometimes my scanner will cut out a part of the card but if there is damage, i put that in the title, or if someone needs a better scan i will take one for them!

[Bluedogcards]

You make a good point, and i see it all the time, most of the time i pass on cards like that, but have gotten good cards with those kind of pic, you know the one you have to have

[Trucker]

Scanner is old school, slow & sometimes scanner bed is full of scratches and what not.
Invest in digital camera, not much more expensive then your standard all-in one printer/scanner/copier/fax. It's much easier to snap images of cards and you'll show them in much better detail. I stopped using scanner a while ago, find it much easier and better with digital camera.

[Penguin101]

Yeah digital camera for sure. I guess even some of the new mobile cameras are able to take good pictures.

[jubei777]

well above all, make sure you ask before you buy/trade for a card regarding it's condition. that way it's safer for you as the buyer in case it does turn to crap to get a refund later on.