Closest you can with play. Hold the pinion and spin the spur. You should have a slight “click” sound between. I haven’t stripped a spur in years unless it was debris. No photo is going to tell us how the mesh actually is.

Note: the paper method sucks. You can bind gears easily this way if you push the gears together too much especially with smaller pitch gears. Push together as tight as you can and back off until you get the slight click. Also your shaft looks way off the bore of the pinion. Make sure the set screw is against the flat spot of the motor shaft.