Spindle pickers and brush and finger strippers were used to harvest in 30 inch and 10 inch cotton production systems. Samples were ginned on the USDA Cotton Ginning Lab micro gin using one and two lint cleaners. HVI and AFIS analysis were run on the lint samples. Harvester type was found to affect the AFIS fiber properties that would be of concern to textile mills, namely neps/gram, short fiber content by weight, visible foreign matter and immature fiber content. Stripper harvesters were about equal in their adverse influence on these properties whether or not bur extractors were operating. While hand and spindle harvesting produced measurable (improved) differences in both AFIS and HVI measurements, bale value computed from USDA AMS loan schedules (1999) was found to be lowest for the spindle harvester. Yields were not considered in this analysis due to row unit harvesters harvesting an unequal number of drills through the plots.