CAC Photography?

CACfan

CAC verifies coin quality via their stickers. But why does CAC not also take realistic, high quality photos? For a fee, of course. PCGS and NGC photos are not at all realistic, nor are auction house images. It is nearly 2022 yet no company can produce decent coin pics, which would go a long way in educating consumers about grading standards and originality, which is why CAC was formed in the first place as per its founder. 

lkeigwin

The simple answer is that photography is not part of CAC's business model. It is onerous, time consuming, requires staff for website development, space and maintenance. And it does not address CAC's mission.

CAC gets high grades for its speedy service and sensible pricing. Customers value that.
Lance.

CACfan

But CAC's self-proclaimed mission is to educate consumers. A great way to do that would be to provide better photos than are available elsewhere. Obviously, CAC would charge extra for images, which would offset any additional costs. 

TurtleCat

Photography has been, and will continue to be, subject to some interpretation. What is a realistic image anyway? How will we get any meaningful agreement on that? The choice of lighting by itself can dramatically change the interpretation of an image especially depending upon the color and surface characteristics of the coin. Something along the lines of nutilt can help but there are flaws in that concept as well. It probably is easier to stay out of it since it's not their market.

EarlyFederalCoinage

CAC is a business. It does not have the resources necessary to do so without decreasing its productivity and increasing its overhead. Obtaining photos also isn’t necessary or conducive to its business model as discussed by the posters above.

Wabbit

lkeigwin said:

The simple answer is that photography is not part of CAC's business model. It is onerous, time consuming, requires staff for website development, space and maintenance. And it does not address CAC's mission.

CAC gets high grades for its speedy service and sensible pricing. Customers value that.
Lance.

Nice to have you here Lance!

Wabbit

It is so hard to take a legit pic of the full slab, but Lance figured it out.  Here is an example.

EarlyFederalCoinage

@lkeigwin can help you out @CACfan . He offers high quality photography at competitive prices.

Catbert

Here's another "Hear Ye" endorsement of Lance with his skills and knowledge!

CAC_Team

This is something that has been suggested before and we agree: Ideally, CAC would take pictures of every approved coin. However, it would be very costly and negatively affect our turnaround rate so there are no plans to make this a CAC service.