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Spent most of yesterday trying to get decent pictures, and last night getting some auctions ready to go. Items REALLY hard to get a good picture of, but finally got some I'm happy with.
If the objects are small, the main problems are reflections off the object and the lighting creating shadows that obscure parts of it.
I cannot say I have cured all the reflection problems, but many objects are shown better if they are illuminated from underneath. The logical thing to use is a slide sorter, but they tend to be rather expensive. After fiddling with sheets of frosted plastic and lighting underneath I gave up and bought a large secondhand slide sorter on ebay for about £30. It has transformed the look of almost everything I photograph and is well worth the expenditure.
A friend suggested that a good alternative would be those illuminators that Hospitals look at Xrays on, but I have never come across one of those.
The other tip is for for shiny objects. The best advice I can glean here is to build a tent and put the illumination outside. Funnily enough a 1943 Amateur Photographer magazines I bought last week gives instructions for such a tent, starting with "use an old lampshade frame - fix wire coathangers to it so that is high enough off your table top, then drape it all with white muslin" This seems worth a try - it should also be comparatively cheap!