Regarding the reason early
catalog coin images were produced from casts, I found this in my notes:
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?action=printpage;topic=102458.0Title: Re: Old
Auction Catalogue Madness!
Post by: Andrew McCabe on May 12, 2016, 05:12:48 am
Quote from: Molinari on May 12, 2016, 04:15:14 am
Why did they make plaster casts back then instead of just photographing the coins?
Good question.
It provides far better photos (the bad exception above is NOT typical), labour costs were low a century ago, and in advance of photoshop and digital cameras, the chances of getting a direct photo even remotely
good were minimal - imagine photographing your coins today in the absence of preview screen - whereas plaster
cast photography was a known reliable technique. Also, photographic printing costs were then very high indeed (using a lot of silver) so if you were going to spend a lot of
money photographing just a few coins - they always selected just the best coins rather than photographing everything - and the cost was anyway going to be high, you might as well spend the extra to make plaster casts and make the photos as
good as possible. Furthermore, to make up the plates needed a second photograph - of the photos sitting on the background of the plate with numbers under (again, in advance of photoshop) using a copy stand. Evidently if you start with prints and then have to photograph those, they'll be a whole lot worse than starting with a
sharp plaster
cast. To see what "just photographing the coins" resulted in, you need only look at the Rheinhold Faelten 1938 Stacks sale - possibly the worst ever plates - and just about any
catalogue from the 1970s which was after printing became
cheap and labour costs for plaster casts became dear, but before photoshop allowed digital improvements; the 1970s represents the nadir of coin photography.