Postcard Scanner recommendation

[countrysidemercantile]

Hello!  I have recently started selling postcards after obtaining a huge collection at auction.  Can someone recommend a decent, not too expensive, postcard scanner?

[larrys.basement]

Any latest flatbed scanner that does photos will do. However, if speed is the issue, and it should be, then you need a scanner with a document feeder. Here, you get what you pay for. For many document feeders, they are aggressive in feeding documents in the scanner whereas they “nip” the edge of the document and leave a slight damaged edge. Let alone, the scan speeds for images is slow. Fine for documents but not for images.

So, in MO, an Epson FastFoto may seem pricy, but it will give a quality scan at fast speeds. About 1 image every second. Super fast. Obviously you need to consider the number of postcards you have and what you value your time as.

As a point of reference, I know of a postcard seller that can list 500 postcards in a day and can do the scans in under a half-hour. Doing scans on a flatbed scanner would take 83 hours.

[mdes162nj]

I've been using an old HP officejet 8610  All in one flatbed scanner/printer/  It has been a trustworthy workhorse on a daily basis for over 15 years.  You could probably find one used or refurbished.

[njrtsr]

I'm very interested in the FastFoto printer you recommended. My biggest concern is with the margins. I do *not* want a scanner that auto-crops the margins right at the edge of the postcard which can hide wear and defects. Does this scanner crop with additional space around the edges or does it go right up to the edge of the card?

[deltilogical]

My experience with scanners is they consider the trimmed edge a feature.  I have used a few tactics to get the scanner to scan past the edge.  The edges and corners are where most problems lie.   I recommend you show the reverse as well.

I wouldn't consider using any kind of mechanical feeder with my old postcards - they can crack or even split going around the turn. 

I've been using my digital camera in sunlight to good effect.  I use the trimmer on ebay after importing the photo, if needed.

of course, I'm sure ebay has a change planned for next month that will make all this moot.

[njrtsr]

@larrys.basement I want to thank you for recommending the FastFoto printer. I got one on a whim last week after you mentioned it and it's going to revolutionize the way I list lower-priced postcards! It's going to pay for itself within a few months.

[countrysidemercantile]

Thanks for that reply!  I am considering one of those.

[deltilogical]

Does it trim the edges?  Does it scan the reverse at the same time?  Buyers want to see the full edges and the reverse.  

[larrys.basement]

It scans the complete photo. Edge to edge with no cropping. As a side note, it supports TWAIN drivers, so you can use other, more advanced, scanning apps if desired.

[njrtsr]

Fresh out of the box it cropped the edges too close. What I did to correct this was use the "Epson Scan 2" program instead of the default one. I tinkered with the settings a bit and honestly I forget if any of that changed the cropping but it gives me exactly what I want now. And it does scan front and back at the same time. I changed the DPI from 300 to 400 not because it wasn't detailed enough, but because it was scanning the postcards *too fast* at 300 for me to feel it was safe! Some examples that I used the scanner are 184737821718 174713770195 174711571204 184734094606. I'm still tinkering with the brightness and contrast because out of the box the contrast is too high and you need to tone it back.

[pratercollectibles]

I'd like to know how anyone can list 500 cards in a day. At 3 minutes a card (which is pretty fast) it will take 25 hrs to list without scanning, meals , sleep.  Unless he is selling duplicates of the same cards over & over. 

[larrys.basement]

I thought so too, until he explained it to me and showed me a few pics of his setup.

Generally, how it goes is like this… (the key is organization)

Sort PC’s by State in “shoe rack cubbie”

Takes a stack of PC and scans front and back by sequence number -1,2,3,4….

Confirms that there are double the number of scans to number of PC.  If there are 500 pc’s, he should have 1000 scans.  He makes his display 2 columns of images. Left is front, Right is back.  Here he can easily scroll down and notice any errors. If there are, the card is pulled from the stack and the images deleted. Cards are easily found based on the image number in error… ie. image number 26, he pulls card 13.

After this is done, another quick check to confirm. A quick Alt-A, F2 and renames all the scans starting from 1.

He then uploads all the photos to his cloud storage service.

He then uses a MS Excel template to enter the information. In the order of the scans.  PC number 1 is the first record, and so on.  At the time, there are only a few fields that needed to be entered - Type, Condition, Era. Everything else is pre-populated and the title is created by concatenating fields together in a field as well of a field containing the hyperlink to the cloud storage of the scanned images.  Also, the use of eBay business policies is helpful.

That Excel file is then uploaded to his third-party listing app that drafts the listings.

Then within his third-party app, he post the drafts to eBay.

He said the most he’s done is 500+ cards a day.  Looking at it now, maybe not start to finish, but if you filled the pipeline everyday with the above process, there is no reason 500+ cards or more could not be done in 4-6 hrs.  Even if you calculate spending 30 seconds per postcard in entering it in Excel.

[deltilogical]

I reviewed those listings and the images look good, and they do show the full edges and corners nicely.    I'd say you have a winner. 

The only other question I'd have is in terms of heat - after a run are the cards coming out of the machine hot to touch?