How to photograph a card for your own record

Step by step

1. 01Set up. Daylight from a window or one desk lamp, a plain white or grey background, and the phone held level with both elbows on the table or on a small stand. No flash: it hides the surface and glares off the holder.
2. 02Square and flat. The card parallel to the lens, the whole slab in the frame with a margin, the edges of the frame parallel to the edges of the slab. A square photograph can be compared; a tilted one cannot.
3. 03Front and back at full frame. One each, sharp, with the label and the card both readable. Then one of the label alone, close enough to read the cert number and the barcode.
4. 04Two corners, close. Two diagonally opposite corners of the card, as close as the phone will focus. Corner wear is a fixed detail that matches across photographs.
5. 05The surface under a low light. Move the lamp down until it rakes across the card at a low angle; scratches, print lines, dents and foil marks show. The holder’s scratches sit on a different plane from the card’s and move differently as you tilt.
6. 06Name the files and keep the originals. The cert number and the date in the file name. Do not crop, edit or filter the record copies; the original file carries its own date and camera data, which is part of the record.
7. 07Store two copies. One with the collection’s list and one elsewhere. Photograph again each time the card arrives or leaves, so the record shows the same card at each step.

What this check does not prove

• The grade. A photograph records what was in front of the lens on a date. It is not a grading, and it does not change the grader’s.
• That the card is genuine. A photograph shows a card. Whether it is the card on the grader’s record is the matching check; whether the card itself is right is the grader’s question.
• That a later photograph is the same card. Only the fixed details, matched one by one, say that. A photograph of the same slab from the same angle is the start of that check, not the end.
• What the card is worth. A grade is not a price. The lookup says nothing about value, and neither does this guide.