New scanner!

A few months ago my brother and I happened to be in our local Staples, and I got to looking at the scanners. They had one I wanted, but I couldn't get it- the credit card machine was not working that day, so we were unable to purchase anything. I am glad, because last month I found myself there again- it's right next door to our Barnes & Noble, which is my favorite traditional store, and I go there fairly often- it doesn't hurt that it's right on the path to my doctor's office. The scanner I wanted was marked down on sale. I didn't really plan to spend the money on a new scanner- but I couldn't resist the sale price saving me some money.

I have been using a Canon scanner for several years, but it can't handle some cards. Any Upper Deck produced cards from 1997-99 and others, it scans with lines through them- not usable at all.

I had an Epson that I had been using until 2012 or so, but it got damaged, and was barely usable- I had to basically recreate each and every scan, but it was not always successful, and it was really, really not fun- so I had been putting all the cards that I couldn't do into a case, to be done later.

That later has come now!

Here is my new scanner...it's scanner #4 in my collection. My original, which was the best, is from 2005 and my new computer does not recognize it.

Here is a scan made on the new scanner.

Now, here's the same scan made using the Canon that I have been doing most everything with lately.

See the difference? It's kind of hard to see on the full page, so here's a close up of the Rusty Wallace card on the top right. You can click on the pictures to make them larger, don't forget.
New Scanner:

Canon scanner:

Now you can really see the difference!
The card is the sample from 1998 Maxx 10th Anniversary, one of my all-time favorite NASCAR sets, and a card that was on my Top 10 Most Wanted list until a friend from the Database gave it to me.

I was told that the scanner would not be able to handle graded cards or coins, because it was not the right kind. That's only partially correct. It can't do graded cards- but that's fine, as I don't need to pay anyone to think for me.

It CAN do coins, though. Or in this case, a medal, slightly larger than a half dollar, that I snagged on sale on the NBA Store website marked down to $5 from it's original $20.

OK, it did that well, so how about a real coin?

Oh yeah, it can do them too. It doesn't really capture the shine on them, but it does capture the details, without being blurry.

The one thing it apparently can't handle is neons; the neon orange in the Larry Nance card looks about the same on both scans shown above. That's a small problem as there are not many cards that have neon components, 1993-94 Fleer, of which the Nance card comes from, is the most prevalent usage of them. For them, I think I will have to set them to the side and then break out my old, nearly dead first computer and my original scanner, which can do everything with ease, except connect to my current computer. It's worth the effort though, and it's not too many cards- the set was 400 but not all of them have neon.

What I decided to do, though, is to work on the mirror foils and the finests. Mirror foils show every speck of dust, every spot of "scanner scuzz" that invariably makes it's way to the scanner tray. I'm planning on going through the not-yet-scanned portion of my collection and pulling out all the mirror foils and the Finest/Chrome style cards and doing them before moving on to other things.

I would have worked on it already but I ended up getting sick this week so I didn't do a whole lot of anything. I had a stash of them easily at hand, that I had set aside because I hate doing them, that I have been working on.
Here's one of the foils I did, and one of the Finests, with the new scanner.

1998-99 Bowman's Best, which the Mayberry card is from, is notoriously hard to scan, as is 1999-00 Bowman's Best.

For now, I am only doing the fronts of the foils, and will do the same with the finests. I will probably use the Canon scanner to do the backs because it scans better- the glass is wider on the new Epson but not as much is usable, and I want to keep as much dust out of it as possible so it "lives" longer than the last Epson I had, which only lasted from roughly 2010-12 before the bottom of the tray got covered with dust and scuzz. (May have been 2009, I don't remember when I got it, I got the Canon in February 2013- one of the big pluses for the Canon is that it tells you what date the scan was made, none of my 3 Epsons do that).

I've got some really amazing stuff to post about, but it'll be a while as getting these foils and finests done while the new scanner still works perfectly is going to take top priority. It will probably take me until July to finish them, they are not quick by any means, even with the newness of the scanner. I've been working on them since Tuesday, with one day when I was the sickest that I didn't scan anything, but I've only been able to scan about 225 card fronts. I can normally do that in a day and a half, not 4 days. But I'd rather do it right than do it fast.

Thanks for reading!