IdeaCoin-It

Did you know that the US Mint estimates that in the United States alone, 147 million people collect or have collected coins? That’s about 50% of all Americans! Even more are curious about the value of coins they have found. Today, the only way to find this out is by sending a coin out to a professional coin grading company, a market that generates over 100 million dollars per year. The company identifies the coin and assigns a numerical grade of 1-70, which corresponds to a ballpark value. While effective, this process takes weeks of turnaround time and is prohibitively expensive. Doing this yourself is also nearly impossible, as assigning a grade to a coin takes years of experience and is impossible to get completely accurate. Our product would scan a collectible coin, and in seconds identifies, assigns a grade to, and gives a general value of the object. The process is instant, many times cheaper than any available method today, and gives consumers the knowledge to make better selling decisions when they wish to sell one or multiple coins, turning hours of research into a quick and easy process. In surveys of almost 200 collectors, 72% said they would use a system like this, and around 50% said that they would also be willing to pay or watch ads in order to use the service. This business would take the form of a mobile app, and use artificial intelligence image recognition to compare a scanned subject coin against a database of hundreds of thousands of other already graded coins.

I have collected coins my whole life and been a part of the American Numismatic Association for 5 years, gaining expertise in collecting in the intricacies of the market. The collectible coin industry is very niche, and my knowledge will aid developers and other organizations.