Scan A Photo, Know the Provenance

Saw this over at coinweek about how Ex-Numis.com has a new service now to scan your coin photo with old catalogs and such from 19th century on to see if your coin has any provenance.

More can be read http://www.coinweek.com/ancient-coi...-you-know-which-collection-your-coin-is-from/

Sounds interesting, but not free. I doubt most of my "dreck" has much documented provenance.

 

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25 to 50 Swiss Francs. That's about what most of my coins are worth, lol.

 

I was hoping this would be opened up to the public, yay! I'll probably try a coin or two.

 

I have heard some people talking about that. Interesting and thanks for sharing...

 

Interesting. I had a very detailed conversation with a few, now former, collectors about 9 years ago about this type of service. I believe the threads are probably still up on Forum. It was not to establish provenance, but rather to speed up attribution work. At the time, SW for image recognition was not advanced enough to work efficiently and effectively. As we have seen in recent threads, a photo is merely a representation of a moment in time, exposure, lighting and angle. Change any of these and photos can look different enough to make identification difficult. Perhaps these issues have now been resolved by advances in technology.

I do know that google image recognition will get you nothing useful when used on ancient coins.

I may use this for the Mithrapata that I just bought. It is die matched to so many other known specimens. It has me wondering when the coin first surfaced. I'm curious if it surfaced around the time of the Podalia hoard. This service may yield me an answer.

I am intrigued.

 

I don't like how they have parceled out the packets of credit you have to buy. 25/50/100/250 etc. Since there is a 5 credit fee even if there is no hit, that means in almost all circumstances you'll end up with an odd number of excess credits which aren't enough to to pay for a hit.

 

What if their search returns 10 hits? Yikes. I've sent them a message asking for details on certain scenarios. Can I exclude pedigree points already known?

 

Hmmm. What this means is that you pre-pay $25. You submit one coin, debit $5. If it gets no hit, you have $20 left to spend. If the SW does not work well, you will likely find nothing and you committed yourself to spend the remaining $20 or lose it.

I don't mind ponying up the $25 or $50 after a successful hit, but to commit it up front on a product that is unproven, well................now I am less intrigued.

 

Thanks for sharing the link, Mat. This is the first I've heard of the service, but I did meet the founder at a show last year. If I had known he was working on this, we would have had a more interesting conversation. As it stands, I'd be curious to see if how accurate the recognition software will be, especially when comparing against older catalogs. The parameters would probably have to be set wider to capture more possible hits that can thereafter be manually verified.

 

I believe AncientJoe has used the service. I could be wrong...I was getting into the champagne at brunch when we were having the discussion...but I think he told me he had some luck with it.

Hey AJ...you out there?

 

Pretty jealous right now.

 

This is really neat. I only have two coins I would consider using this service for but that is a long way off. I hope some really cool provenances appear because of it!

 

Thanks @Mat ! I have been capturing some not-so-collected RR's, and several that have been labeled "rare". I get some provenance, however, since some of my interests are not as mainstream, it would be great to get deeper provenance on the coins. I like everyones' comments and "testing" of the service. Thank you.

I may not be as vocal on the threads, I am watching and learning from you all's valuable comments and input. Thank you!!!

 

I signed up for the trial with 20 free credits. It will debit against the 5 credit fee against that without having to enter any credit card info (that is a positive)

I submitted the Mithrapata to see how well this works. If they get a hit (and they should, since I sent in the Triton photo) I will see how the rest of the process works.

 

*GASP*, does this mean you're a Hipster?

 

Haha same here.

 

LOL, maybe RR Hipster? Never thought about it that way.

 

Good, I'm glad somebody stepped up to the plate as a guinea pig. Take one for the team!

 

I also signed up with the free 20 credits offer. I have submitted the photos of 2 coins. I will post the results when I get them.

 

4to2 - don't send your Mithrapata in. I'm pretty sure its already been run through the service.