Automated Cherry Picker?

[josht]

O.K. my last post of the day, I swear it .

I, being of the inquisitive and junk drawer robotic building type of nature, had a thought about finding varieties. Possibly lucrative, possibly ludicrous. I wonder if anyone has ever attempted to automate the process of finding rare coin varieties. The concept is not that extreme, is it?
1) coins go in a hopper
2) dropped single file on a narrow moving belt
3) camera 1 snaps a photo
4) small mechanism flips the coin
5) camera 2 snaps photo
6) computer program aligns and orients coins uniformly and compares with database (same as law enforcement does fingerprints)
7) separation of the goodies from the regs

Feasible?

[amosamos16]

That's funny!!

[willbrooks]

I really like the concept. Seems far-fetched that it could do an adequate job, though. Would it also be able to identify error coins, which are unique? I don't think so. And what about new unlisted varieties? You'd never find one. And when the die becomes deteriorated? What then? Also, sounds like such a machine might damage the coins. Cool idea, though. Always be thinking!

[liveandievarieties]

And what about a machine that would not only bake you incredible pastries, but consume them for you too? Or a beer brewing contraption that makes a fantastic lager, then pours it down the sink for you....

[willbrooks]

Or a beer brewing contraption that makes a fantastic lager, then pours it down the sink for you....

Most lagers deserve that fate anyway.
When are you going to graduate to ale? Wait a minute, I thought you were a wino anyway....

[Scott99]

Its a nice idea but i think it really could only be used to identify wide am/close am and rpms(which would only be based on the mint mark location relative to the date so it wouldnt be 100% accurate.)

[simonm]

I've got to agree with Chris on this. While it might be efficient for a machine to pick out varieties for us, it would take out the joy of searching. If your hobby was building model planes, would you want a machine that makes one for you? This exact topic has been presented before on the forum, and the conclusion that we came to was that it would be very difficult if not impossible to create a program that could identify errors, and, if somehow one was created, that it would take the joy out of collecting. My opinion only, though.

[Antiquity]

Your question reminded me of this video, took me forever to go back through ANAs twitter posts. Just thought it was a pretty cool video:

LINK HERE

[copperlover]

I prefer the human cherrypicker who often go for low hanging fruit but occasionally finds that tempting fruit. Oh the Joy.

Lucien

[josht]

LOL, I thought this idea might ruffle a few tail feathers. I'm not suggesting that it's a good idea or a bad idea. I'm merely stating that it could be a potentially profitable one. And I do think that one day, we will see it come it to pass.

[josht]

How it works.

[liveandievarieties]

Don't take my comments the wrong way, I've got a pretty dry sense of humor Josh! I love fun conversation and occasionally am a bit of a smart alec.

Currently, I don't think the technology exists to make such a thing possible. Perhaps down the road, but there's no way to program something to find and recognize everything that we learn to while discerning worthless anomalies.

[liveandievarieties]

I like the illustration Josh, makes me look forward to the day that the world pick-off happens- pitting man against machine like Big Blue vs. Kasparov in chess....

[josht]

I like the illustration Josh, makes me look forward to the day that the world pick-off happens- pitting man against machine like Big Blue vs. Kasparov in chess....

Lets not forget ole John Henry! And no, I take no offense whatsoever. I'm completely neutral. Just another way technology and man's inherent greed and laziness might affect yet another favored pastime. I hope one day that I, too will be able to attest the joys of the "BIG FIND". Gotta get some better magnification, though. Right now, it just hurts my eyes

[simonm]

While the principle might seem just as simple as a coin on a conveyor belt into a "photography chamber" in a single file fashion, designing a program that can identify doubled dies is something else completely. I am not a programmer, but I'm sure that programmers will tell you the process might not be as simple as one might expect.

A different idea, as seen in the youtube video provided, is having a machine that will sort your coins individually by date, instead of a human hand-picking dates from a roll or bag. That would be something that is convenient, but not so convenient that it takes the fun away from the process. This would be the ideal machine. It saves you the time of sorting, but still allows you to manually search your coins for varieties and errors.