Coin Scanner <– Link

Mods: this isn’t for sale, and I’m not trying to sell anything. I’m looking for constructive criticism from people who collect coins.

I’m a robotics engineer, and I’ve been building a desktop scanner that photographs a coin under a bunch of different lighting directions, then reconstructs its surface. You can turn it around, change the lighting, inspect details, and generate a report. It also uses AI to help identify the coin and interpret what it sees.

The reports are AI-generated, including the grade estimates. Some comparisons with graded coins have been close, but the sample is small and it’s gotten things wrong too. Still very much a work in progress.

I’ve been having a blast using it on my collection, but I’m curious what you would actually do with one:

What’s the last question about a coin that you couldn’t settle with photos and a loupe? That’s probably the most useful thing you could tell me.

If you saw this at a coin show, would you bring a coin over? What would you want to find out?

Which part interests you most: inspecting surfaces, comparing die details, identifying a coin, documenting condition, or getting images and a report for your collection/listings? Something else entirely?

Looking at the example reports, what’s useful—and what’s just a wall of information you’d never read?

What would you need to see before trusting an observation it makes? Close-ups, the original photographs, repeat scans, a human review?

Also, if your honest reaction is “cool engineering project, but I’d never use it,” tell me why. That’s useful feedback too!

And if you stick around this long- please ignore the domain and the name—the domain was sitting around with me, and the name is basically word vomit.