Photography / Greek Numismatics pt2: The Wise Owl

Yesterday I photographed the Phoenix of 1930. Today is the turn of the Wise Owl 1973.

The Wise Owl is one of my favorite coins and they were minted as a one year-issue. While mintage reached tens of millions for both the 1 Drachma and 2 Drachma owls, the available coins in the market go down over the years, due to demand for jewelry and coin art. It's not uncommon to have items featuring these owls, whether it's keychains, pendants or even canes (!).

The metal composition is a bronze alloy and it tends to get a brownish patina unless one preserves the coin in, let's say, more airtight conditions. Even fingerprints can leave a permanent reaction on these coins so its pretty difficult to get spotless coins, unless one has access to uncirculated coin rolls, and even then the paper of the roll might have chemically interacted with the coin, making it duller. Last time I checked on ebay, coin rolls with uncirculated owls went for ~100$.

As far as the photo is concerned, the camera used is the same compact Sony DSC-WX220. I've gone over to more manual settings, using ISO 100 / EV -2.0, with light being supplied from the slightly dim afternoon sun (indoors). I've manually increased the contrast a bit in the 3rd photo, I think the result came out even better.

Copyright notice: I release these in the public domain, for use or edit, by anyone, for any reason, with no attribution required.