Best Scanners for PSA Cards?

General
21

Nicely done, those look great haha!! I will have to take advantage of this!

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22

Definitely not as good as the pictures you’ve taken, but I picked up one of these and with just leaving my camera on ‘auto’ I think it did a fantastic job capturing the holo pattern:

With a bit of practice I can see this being how I take pictures of all my cards in future; this is far better than anything my scanner can come up with and as a not-even-amateur photographer (I own a camera because I went on holiday once) I think this came out wonderfully… just need to work on the positioning.

Perhaps I need to invest in one of those PSA stands - the stands I usually use angled the cards up too much and lead to a bit too much glare from the light.

Thank you for the advice!

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23

You’re actually really close. You will have better success at this than I will since I’m playing with a lower-res version of the image that has been compressed and uploaded to the forum, but here is your same picture with some simple iphone tweaking (I crushed the blacks so there isn’t a milky look in the background): Outside of that, you got it. Maybe just buy a psa stand so your cards don’t have to lean against the background and can refract more light.

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24

The Stand really makes the difference.

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25

I’ve noticed that dark holos are really tough to shoot against a dark background regardless of the boxlight. Sometimes you’ll still need to use some natural light as well. Case and point, I’m still not completely happy with how this works:

Anyone else have tips for extremely dark holos?

26

Using @chrisbalestra 's method of a light box plus a mix of some Instagram magic produces some very beautiful results.

For this I used my phone and only the light from the light box, taking the picture in an otherwise completely dark room. I placed the card in the middle of the light box and propped it up with a small spice shaker (gotta use something, right), then set the Instagram setting to -25 brightness, +25 contrast, +25 structure and +50 sharpen, with a Ludwig filter added on top to remove the background graininess:

https://instagram.com/p/BvKcFmTHKEW

Not too sure how this will look on other devices, but I think this looks pretty awesome on both my phone and laptop.

I think I’m getting the hang of this now. :grin:

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27

Looks terrific!!! If there is an option to darken shadow, that helps with the background graininess. Another thing that helps is if you get to a point that you like with your settings; you can SCREENGRAB that pic on your laptop or phone, then REAPPLY some of those settings to remove any further background graininess as needed :blush:

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28

I like how this turned into a @chrisbalestra collection thread LOL :wink:

But seriously, nice tips Chris - I’ve had one of the light boxes you linked for a minute but my results haven’t been great. I’ll apply some of your techniques and see if I can do better.

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29

Here’s a Play ____ Ray I also got from @masonkampe:

I do need one of those fancy PSA stands though.

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30

They help with refracting light back into the card :grin:.

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31

Great pics Chris. I think I’ll try it out your way.

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32

I’ve been playing around with this quite a bit. I use Snupps to photograph and share my collection and I also have an eBay store. For Snupps, I want to get the most flattering picture of my cards, but for eBay I want the most honest. I picked up an Epson V370 last month to help with listing cards on eBay. The scans are coming out crystal clear, but there is a caveat. For whatever reason, the bar that contains the lights/camera for scanning has a green strip running the length of it. This leads to holos with a light/white or mirror background giving off a very green vibe. There are some options in the Epson software to subdue the green tint, but that also removes a bit of the green from the artwork itself. I’ll be using this scanner for now, but will probably upgrade in the future. Works great for scanning a bunch of cards quickly.

For my Snupps photos, I bought a lightbox set from a local camera shop just for the lamps that came with it. I use these sitting off to the left and right, hitting the card at 45° angles. I use my Galaxy S8+ camera for pictures, although I haven’t been able to get everything perfectly in focus in a single shot. I’ve tried autofocus and manual focus, but the edges of the cards always seem to be soft. The yellow borders kind of throw off the camera lens. I manually override the light setting to Daylight, otherwise the background would be very grey and the colors would be washed out. I’ll be getting a new phone next year so we’ll see if that helps. Here are some example photos:

Epson scan of the Mew, notice the green reflection:

Picture of the Mew, better reflection but corner edge softness:

Some PSA examples:


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33

hi guys, i am having trouble with a new scanner…

i bought this canon scan lide400, but it sucks, and cannot seem to scan the backside of the clam shell psa cards…

is there any advice ? or anybody know what settings i maybe need to change.?

I tried every combination, and its not working, as it picks up the small plastic edge on the back used to help stack the cards nicely; as the main surface, and seems to be scanning that edge, and not the actual card and psa label which is a few mm’s above the actually scanner glass.

i feel like throwing this scanner in the bin.

here is the fronts and backs lol;




34

Your scanner has a CIS lens meaning it will only scan the surface…
Throwing it away if you only want to scan PSA slabs seems the right choice.

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35

I’m trying to use this scanner, but am getting white light reflections at even intervals along the top and bottom of the card. You can see them in the picture above and in other pictures where the Epson scanner was used. Any idea how to get rid of those? Or does it not bother you?

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@charizandrew

Not sure if there’s a way to get rid of them, but if you open the lid and scan the cards in a dark room, the bloom isn’t so bad.

What I want to know is what scanner PWCC uses. They don’t seem to have any weird looking holo patterns. The only scans they have that usually don’t look good are the Meiji cards. They also don’t suffer with the spots of light, although the image seems a bit dim.

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37

Thanks @benoit489, I’ll try that out since it does look better. PWCC scans still look the best, it would be nice to find out what they use.

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38

The search still continues for the best scanner. Tried some reverse holo E-series cards, not pleased with the result:

At least normal holo look pretty good:

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39

Just a heads up my Epson V370 has bitten the dust after about 2 years and about 1500 or so scans. The arm thing that moves to scan it started making a loud squeaking noise and now it has gone the way of the dinosaurs.

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40

I’m Imagining a scanner on the ground next to a triceratops as a meteor hurdles toward earth.

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