I got an IT8 scanner color calibration target and used it to calibrate my scanner, so I thought I'd show you the results if you're interested. This is my badge that I commissioned from  marcimcadam in 2012. I adjusted the brightness curves myself, but those are the same in both images. The only difference: The image on the left uses a built-in sRGB color profile not customized for any particular scanner, and the one on the right uses the color profile generated using the IT8 target in my scanner.

The version of this badge that I posted here was entirely tweaked by hand, and you can see a lot of problems with that, but it's better than it was to begin with. But this is even better. Look how orange my hair is in the left image above. And look how dark my irises are. They don't look like that in the original.

The purple of my dress still looks washed out to me, comparing the image to the right with the badge itself. However, I think what's going on there is the fact that the light in this room is somewhat yellowish, which is going to make purples look darker, while the image on the monitor doesn't have that problem. Pure white light, if I had a source like that, would probably not have that effect.

Now I can scan some photographs, happier in the knowledge that I'm not corrupting the colors with this old scanner.