Hi! Having been the beneficiary of this community's many active and gracious contributors over the past 2 years, and having been so new I couldn't contribute anything back, I thought I might offer a little something. I have been using CoinSnap (about $30 yearly) for about 3 years. Three years ago, it was an interesting app that more or less could "get a new guy in the ballpark" many times, but it was way way off sometimes. I've noticed it has improved greatly over the past 3 years, and I wanted to give it an acid test. I had some coins graded by ANACS recently and wanted to share the results of ANACS grading vs. the CoinSnap grading. Understood that ANACS isn't PCGS or NGC, but as most of mine were copper with some varieties, ANACS seemed to be the most cost effective fit. As you can see from the table below, ANACS and CoinSnap agreed 7 out of 13 times. They were close 5 of 13 times and they disagreed strongly once. In 3 of the 5 times where they were close, the grade was within the tier or right next to it, so I called that "acceptable." In 2 of the 5 times where they were close, it was a "two-step jump across adjacent tiers," which I thought would be acceptable, but you may not think so, and that's OK. For a person still learning though, I'll take it. The time they disagreed was for a 1785 VERMONTS copper that was holed and bent, so on that one, I'll give CoinSnap a little slack as it was more conservative than ANACS. I was surprised it could identify it at all as it took me a couple of hours initially to figure it out (I wasn't orienting it correctly). CoinSnap won't tell you that the grade is "details." However, it will tell you that it's scratched or corroded and where that is located. It will tell you about the luster or lack thereof and also about the wear, if any, and where that wear is located. So, you can pretty much figure out if it is likely to generate a "details" grade or not. It will also pull recent sales of that coin in that condition and will give you a value. You can also add that coin, with pictures, grade and value to your CoinSnap online collection and pull it up anytime on your phone. Up until about a year ago, different lighting on the coin would generally generate a different grade. That seems to have been resolved, although I can still get it to do that once in a while if I really mess with the lighting to try and trick it. In case you are thinking that this post is an ad for CoinSnap, I assure you it's not. I wanted to share with this community my experience with it as I've scanned a couple thousand coins with it so far. However, this is the only time it dawned on me to really test it out against a TPG and to try and give back a little something to CT. These coins are old and most have "details." As I work with CoinSnap on more modern coins - Morgans, Mercury Dimes, Buffalo Nickels, etc., I double check the results with the PCGS website as well as CG and the results aren't better or worse that what I've shared - it keeps me from being too optimistic! So, here are thirteen data points in the chart below for your consideration (or not). Thanks!
Interesting. I think it starts to run into more trouble with AU/MS coins. I wonder how "CoinKnow" would compare.
Have you tried it with some of the guess the grades on this site? See how the app does on some higher grade coins? Pictures might not be the best, but a good way for you to practice with this app. I have not tried that with chatgpt - so far I have only tried it with my coins. it is not exact and hits a few of them. Variety attribution can be a challenge for it, but I can usually guide it to the correct attribution - but I have to know it first. I also wonder how these AI things learn or if they only do that when the code changes. We all know EBAY AI is very limited to what it does and who it favors. I doubt they will ever be exact especially since two coins can look vastly different in pictures - even in really good pictures - and still have the same grade.
A couple months ago my brother was playing around with a coin app. Not sure if it was coinsnap or not. I got out some PCGS and NGC graded coins for him to try it on. And that was definitely the case, with the AU/MS coins. By the way, thank you @Atlanta for sharing your observations.
From what you say it seems to be improving. I would not consider G4 coins getting VG8 “acceptable “ though. That’s a big jump in value for a lot of coins.
