I want to write my first iPhone/iTouch applications and am looking for some motivation. I found an old "Intrinsic Value of Silver Coins" wheel that gives you the silver value of US coins for spot prices ranging from $3.50 to $8.50 ( I said it was old!) A real simple app for me to start with would be bringing this to iPhone platform and provide a user selected spot price (perhaps extending it to get real time spot price from kitco or ??). Its going to be free, what else should I add to it? Would this be of ANY value to anyone? What else would be of value to collectors? Maybe an interface to CoinTalk or a wish list or ??? I just need some inspiration to get off my development A$$.
An app that presented the current silver value of many popular world coins would be very useful. A lot of folks dig through junk boxes and lots to find silver for their collections.
I have an excel spread sheet that a member of CT sent me years ago that after you plug in the current value of silver, spits out all the values of what each silver coin is worth. Then you can plug in how many silver coins you have and it will calculate the total value. I liked it a lot. I still have it and use it after all these years. That definitely would be neat to have as an app.
I think this would be a valuable tool to anyone selling silver. I don't see any reson a dealer or jeweler should pay less than 90% of spot. I've heard of some of these large buyers with the annoying commercials paying 60% of spot or less. Oh, but they will ship it free for you!
Counterfeit detector.... Seriously, it would be nice to have a quick reference for checking counterfeit coins...
What would be the best source(s) for recent news on counterfeits? Sounds like at least 3 of us would like the silver calculator so I think I will go for it. This is what I came up with to calculate. Anyone have anything different? ( I am ignoring metals other than silver at this point. Is that a poor decision?) US Coin Spot Multiplier US $1.00 (.90) 0.7735 US $1.00 (.40) 0.3162 US $.50 (.90) 0.3617 US $.50 (.40) 0.1479 US $.25(.90) 0.1808 US $.10 (.90) 0.0723 US $.05 (.350) 0.0563
I would ignore other metals at this time also. It's illegal to mealt nickels and cents for their metal content at this time, anyway.
Yes it would be nice. Might have it be something you can enter number into. 12 - 90% Silver Dime 10 - 90% Silver Quarter 15 - 90% Silver Half 20 - 40% Silver Half Total Ounces in silver, Total melt value Also might be nice if it had a precent u can change. so it starts out at 100% but if you as a buyer might want to only pay 90% or you could change it to 105% if you wanted too. Hope this is what you were asking.
As a former software developer, a couple words of advice. It seems like a simple little thing, but... 1. Avoid the dime, quarter stuff. Base it on face value - if you do the math, 10 dimes or four quarters is exactly the same amount of silver. Same for 40% stuff. 2. Avoid world coinage or you'll be doing database stuff rather than programming.
Maybe you could make it similar to this one. http://www.coinflation.com/coins/silver_coin_calculator.html
#1 I think I will make that an option. The challenge is obvously that not all 'face values' are created equal (i.e. 90%, 40%, 35%). #2 maybe will include in a future release when I want to play with remote databases.
Somethink like that for a simply interface.... I think there are at least two uses here. Some who just want to know what the current intrinsic value of a coin is and someone selling/valuing a bunch of 'junk' silver and what to get an idea of the total value.
As a software manager/developer myself, I suggest that you check out the link to www.coinflation.com that was provided above, and ask yourself the following question: Why do I need a dedicated application for this when I can just fire up Safari, and go to this Website to get the same basic information? Fwiw, in a world in which the number of iPhone/iTouch apps is approaching 100,000, what value will yours provide that will make it stand out?
Certainly not to make money. As I said, partly to learn/play with development on the iTouch/iPhone and partly because I own an iTouch and would find a standalone applications more convenient than firing up a browser on my BB.
