Are you scanning prints, slides or negatives? For prints, a good scanner works OK. Remember though that unless extraordinary care was taken with the originals, the flaws in the picture that have taken place since first printed, such as dust, scratches and debris will also get scanned. Importing that scan of a 3.5 x 4.5 picture to 24" monitor will make matters look worse. Slides and film negatives have similar problems. Additionally, prints tend to fade over time, as to negatives to a smaller degree. Negatives often suffer from scratches which can sometimes be corrected in post processing but require time. Suppose you spend 15 minutes average "fixing" a scan, and have 400 prints to do, that equates to 100 hours of work. Then there's the cost of photo editing software. I use Photo$hop, which is expensive and hard to learn.
Here is a print scanned into digital form:
Here it is after post processing:
One note on this example, there was no dust or damage (folds, creases, scratches) to fix, so processing was relatively easy.
Here's worse old print scanned to digital form:
Processed:
These were all scanned using a typical scanner. I do recommend a special scanner if doing film negatives or slides, but they aren't too expensive - between $100 and $200.
Right down to the wire baskets!
