The time when collectors could only use ordinary books has passed, and a new era of artificial intelligence and machine learning has arrived, making the world of coin collecting simple and open to everyone.
Mobile coin search apps, whether CoinSnap or Coin ID Scanner, are actually very complex systems that work with intelligent neural networks, allowing you to view photos of coins taken with a regular phone camera, see important data such as the year, place of manufacture and country of origin, even find small broken parts or various types of coins.
A Look at the Best Tools
The market for coin finding apps is now full of many choices, with companies trying to be the best in getting the correct result, speed, size of the list, and extra things like grading and managing collections.
Coin ID Scanner
Coin ID Scanner is a main platform, focusing on a very high level of correct finding, getting this good result by using new smart computer networks (CNNs), its smart rules…
- being made to look at many small parts of the coin at the same time,
- giving a correct result even for old coins showing a lot of wear,
- having flat parts or having broken key details like the year or the factory mark
This app works with an international list of coin information, covering coins from the oldest times to the newest special money, giving the user information about how rare the coin is and its likely market price, using old selling information.
Many users like it for its speed and its ability to quickly add the found coin to their personal digital list.
Coinoscope
The best thing about Coinoscope is its wide link to other selling places, allowing the user to quickly see the market action around the coin and guess its likely selling price, giving a fast, clear view of the coin for any person wanting to learn more about a new find.
CoinSnap
The app uses an AI looking to check how good the coin’s surface is, trying to give it a class on the world scale like AU, VF, XF, always telling users that this grade is only the first guess and cannot take the place of grading by expert companies.
Working with new smart features and big lists of information, this app often uses a monthly pay rule, giving people full access to all scans and deep price information.
Apps from Official Grading Companies
These special apps, like PCGS Cert Verification, aren’t made to find unknown coins from a picture, their main job being to check the realness and information of coins already slabbed by experts.
By scanning the barcode or putting in the number from the plastic holder, the app immediately gives the official information from the company’s list: the grade, the date the coin was checked, and the coin’s picture.
How to Choose the Right App
Correctness and Size of the Information List
It is important that the app cannot only find the main things as country, year but also see small differences like changes in the writing, mistakes in the making, things that can greatly change the coin’s money value, so expert users must check the number of unique records and how often the lists are updated.
Grading
Apps with good grading can look at things like:
- Small Detail State: How much the hair on a face or the details of a country sign are worn away.
- Color and Patina: While the surface color (patina) can be a hard thing to check, new smart rules are starting to use it in the value check.
- Damage: The app automatically finds scratches, dents, signs of cleaning, or other human changes.
Easy to Use and Speed
For the general user, how easy the app is to use is very important, so a good app must:
- Give clear rules for taking the photo
- Have a very short wait time
- Offer easy-to-use tools for cutting the picture and focusing inside the app itself
Cost and How the App Makes Money
Most apps use one of these three ways to make money:
- Freemium: Basic finding is free, but getting better features needs a monthly pay.
- One-Time Buy: Less common, but some apps offer a single payment for the app or a certain list.
- Monthly Pay: Full access to all features and constant updates to the information list, this being the most common way for the best tools, as coin information is always changing.
Using the Apps in Collecting and Trading
More than just finding the coin, modern apps offer very strong tools for making and managing a digital list of the coins, with the found coin being automatically added to the user’s personal list, where they can add:
- Buying History: The date, place, and money paid for the coin
- Current Place: Which album or safe the coin is in
- Photo Album: The chance to add several pictures of the coin from different angles and light
- Money Check: The app automatically works out the total money value of the collection, using the current market price information it has
In coin markets and sales, time is very important, so being able to quickly check an interesting coin using Coin ID Scanner or a similar one allows the collector to make decisions in just a minute. The app can:
- Making sure the coin isn’t a common one being wrongly sold for a high price
- Showing the middle selling price for the same coins over the last half year
- Pointing out strange parts or differences from the perfect picture, helping people avoid buying a bad copy
How the Apps Work and Their Smart Technology
The first step is when the user takes the picture, with the quality of this photo being very important for the smart look later, so apps often give the user clear rules on how to put the coin: having good, even light without bright spots, putting the coin on a simple colored surface, and holding the camera straight above the coin.
Some better apps use special phone camera parts for depth or keeping the picture steady, making sure the photo is as clear as possible.
After taking the picture, the app prepares the image, a process including these steps:
- Fixing the View and Shape: Smart rules fix the picture, making flat any wrong shapes caused by holding the camera at an angle
- Making the Light Normal: The app automatically or half-automatically takes away shadows and bright spots, showing the coin as if it were in perfect light conditions
- Cutting the Coin Out: The app finds only the coin from the background, letting the AI focus only on the needed picture parts
The smart network automatically finds thousands of key points on the coin’s surface: the shape of the face, the place of letters, the style of the writing, details of the country signs, and the place of small things like coin factory marks. The found features are changed into a math code, this code being like a special “digital ID” for the coin.
This special code is checked against the codes kept in the app’s big list, using ways to check how close they are to find the closest possible matches.
The app gives a list of possible matches, ranking them by how likely they are to be correct, giving full information for each coin: country, year, value, series, and a guide book link.
Conclusion
While the human eye and knowledge will still be necessary for the final verification of the rarest and most expensive coins, such apps can be a basis and element of self-verification. Especially for novice numismatists who aren’t sure of their knowledge, but they are shy about contacting colleagues or don’t have any acquaintances from this field at all.