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He catalogued his wife's inherited coin collection with an app that scans each coin and looks up what it is worth

His wife was left a massive box of coins by her late grandfather many years ago, and they had never catalogued them. He built an app that scans a coin and records its year, type, series and what it is made of, then checks websites for an approximate value and adds it to the collection. It can filter views, track where each coin is physically stored, and show graphs of the total value and the breakdown by coin type. There is also a virtual coin book he can flip through, using the photos he captured while scanning each coin in. For now the app is just for him.

How it works

  1. Build a scanning app
  2. Photograph each coin
  3. The app identifies year, type, series and composition
  4. It checks websites for approximate value
  5. The collection is stored with locations, charts and a virtual coin book

Why it’s worth knowing

A box that sat uncatalogued for years became a priced, searchable collection because the camera does the identifying.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on reddit.com. See the original ↗

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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.