Scan "The Man", Musial

[the 'stache]

It's nearly springtime. Four more days to go! And you know what that means. Spring means rising temperatures, hay fever, and spring training. And with the coming baseball season, young boys and young-at-heart-men start trading, buying and selling baseball cards. Glorious baseball cards. Little slices of cardboard heaven. Romanticized pictures of greats long gone, as well as today's players.

But how do you accurately represent the cards you are wanting to sell? How do you take good pictures, and share them with potential customers, without spending a fortune?

As I've spent time perusing the B/S/T boards, I've seen lots of new faces. Excellent! (insert your own Bill and Ted reference here). But one thing I'm seeing are some pictures of cards available for trade, or sale, and they're nearly impossible to see. So, I'm here to help. If you want to make some money, either to pay for bills, or, better yet, buy more cards, you need clean pictures of your beauties. And you don't have to spend much to get them.

I've just finished doing some scans of a few random cards from my collection. Pre-war cards, vintage cards, and modern cards. I've tried to create a variety of images showing just how good cards can look, regardless of how they are stored. While we all love holding our cards without plastic tombs, sometimes, they're a necessity. There are a handful of ways that cards are stored and/or scanned, so I've utilized them all, well, almost. First, the eye candy.



Three T206 cards, scanned as graded by PSA, SGC, and au natural. Just Mr. Fred Merkle slapped face down on my scanner, and covered with a black sheet of construction paper.

Next, some vintage cards.



Here we have a 1953 Bowman Carl Erskine, scanned in a Card Saver, and au natural. And, for giggles, I scanned a 1975 Topps Don Money au natural. I'm also including a link to a larger scan of the 1975 Topps Don Money card that will give you all an idea of just how big a difference a scanner can make when attempting to ascertain the true condition of a card. Of course, you can go much bigger than that, too.

Last, but not least, a few modern cards scanned in a variety of holders.



The first card, a Bowman Chrome rookie auto of Max Fried is in a Beckett (BGS) slab. You'll notice there's some strange discoloration evident in the top third of the card. This is due to Beckett's placing cards in plastic sleeves before slabbing, and the light reflects off the sleeve. Next is a Bowman Chrome rookie auto of Lucas Giolito in a one touch magnet case. And, finally, an Upper Deck Exquisite auto of Joe Thomas. This, too, is in a one touch, but a much thicker variety. The point here is that all the cards, regardless of the era, or what they are in, can be cleanly scanned, showing their condition in great detail. Collectors like me appreciate clear images like this, as they allow us to know exactly what we are buying.

And the best part is that I'm using a 12-year old Canon Canoscan 8400F to do these images. I got it about four years ago for $60 delivered on Ebay. I use Photoshop CS2 to crop my images, but you can use any free image editing software like GIMP, or even Adobe Photoshop Express, to do this.

There are a lot of great scanners out there, and new ones come out every year. I'm using this old relic and CS 2 on Windows 7, and don't have any issues. When you are shopping for a scanner, make sure that you pay close attention to the scanning element, and the lighting source, because the wrong one will severely impact your image quality. The Canon scanner I have is a flatbed with a CCD scanning element (CCD is charge-coupled device). A lot of scanners, especially those combination scanners/fax machines/printers will have CIS elements. Those are made for scanning documents. They're problematic when trying to scan anything that isn't very near to the scanning glass. Any graded card slab, or one touch will actually lift the card further away from the scanning element, and the results won't be pretty. This old scanner also had a cold cathode fluorescent lamp for a lighting source. That's old technology. It's a little slower than what's being used now, but I like this one for scanning modern cards, especially those with any reflective qualities. The cold cathode elements don't create glare, or "banding". It's a nice even lighting source.

There are a plethora of topics about scanners on the forum. The one I'll eventually upgrade to when this one dies is a Canoscan 9000F Mk II. It uses a LED light source, but has a much higher DPI, so the detail is even better. But my scanner, which has seen a lot of use since I bought it three-and-a-half years ago, is still going strong, and giving me great picture quality. So, I'm in no rush.

So, take a (very) little bit of that money you were going to spend on cards, get yourself a good scanner, open an account at a free image hosting site (I have started using Imgur), and you'll be amazed at how much more business you'll get.

Happy scanning!

Bill