Options
Vardera AI
Steve27
Posts: 13,284 ✭✭✭
I saw them advertising in The Numismatist, is this the future of coin grading?
"It's far easier to fight for principles, than to live up to them." Adlai Stevenson
0
Comments
For sure it is another method of separating the collector from his cash.
Whether it is worthwhile or not, not sure.
Collectors just need to learn how to grade. Increasingly they appear to not want to.
Grading has been less import for my collecting so far as I have focused on coins that are rare enough so that grades are less important.
Of course, that may change in the future so it's interesting to follow these developments.
"We accept photos from any device—even low-quality smartphone images" means the grade is going to be even more subjective than getting consensus among collectors with coin in-hand. Then comes the question of authenticity.
This is not the future. To be very accurate it would need extremely high res images at many angles for each coin. This could be useful as a first line filter for an online auction house to catch bad submissions.
Rare-Change.com - Low listing fee
Newbie collectors are getting sucked in by all these coin grading apps -- none of them are worth anything.
There was a discussion on this and several astute observers noted that to be accurate would require imaging the coin in 3D with it tilting and rotating while the light sources did their thing to be even remotely accurate with a single coin and it would need a massive database of coins imaged in the same way and compared to multiple legitimately graded (PCGS/NGC/CAC/ANACS) coins with the same treatment. So at this point it is a practical impossibility right now, but nothing stays impossible forever.
That would be a simple and useful step -- just do an overlay of known varieties. But don't expect EBay to shell out any cash to such an effort, they don't even take counterfeit reports seriously when the counterfeit is beyond obvious.
Try to expand your thinking and not live in the tiny box of your own current knowledge base.
It would be completely useless anyplace that has anyone with half a brain, which leaves the EBay AI. If EBay sellers can't make decent photos then they should be kicked until they can -- it is NOT difficult. Any half wit with a cellphone can shoot a decent coin shot, but then if you are trying to obscure defects or faux errors like so many EBay sellers, yeah that is an issue.
And no, there are MANY EBay counterfeits that are simple to identify with a quick overlay, if you have minimal Photoshop skills.
You are funny, which is why I cannot block you.
Disagree. There is a much higher percentage of people who cannot take a decent coin picture than the percentage of people who can.
Coin Photography
I'm thinking more broadly. Could PCGS go out, purchase it an AI, train it on their database of coin images, and then use it to replace the graders? I think they would still have to have a Finalizer to make sure the AI wasn't hallucinating.
I doubt it. They would likely need images at different angles and light reflections. This AI doesn't revue in a similar way to a human. Plus many fakes would be hard to detect with only images.
Rare-Change.com - Low listing fee
You're back in the box.
Look at the macro. The marketplace. When Joe collector sends his MS65 that hd paid MS65 retail, in to get his AI grade and it comes out MS63 that is not acceptable. Now transfer that scenario too an iconic rarity, for instance the 69 Large Cent. There is little chance that will AI grade 69.
That is why I think it will only be acceptable on moderns and with a different scale. That would be marketable and market acceptable. .
What you say is true. No question about it.
The bigger problem is that a coin is worth much less when its not slabbed.
Good deals can still be bought when raw so that works in a person's favor if they learn to grade.
Student of numismatics and collector of Morgan dollars
Successful BST transactions with: Namvet Justindan Mattniss RWW olah_in_MA
Dantheman984 Toyz4geo SurfinxHI greencopper RWW bigjpst bretsan MWallace logger7 JWP BruceS bigjpst
JWP PROMETHIUS88
I will call your market adjustability and raise you this scenario:
Joe collector is po'd his 63 is worth thousands less than his 65. Why would he entertain TPGAI?
I don't think they have enough images for more than a handful of coins. And many of the images they do have are internal and may not be of sufficient quality for a grading AI.
One of the things that people miss when they hear about image classifiers (which, if you think about it, is what grading is: here's a bunch of MS65 images, here's MS64, etc., classify THIS new image)... is that it's often opaque how they operate.
There are cases where people have decompiled the classifier and found it to focus on seemingly unremarkable minutiae.
ANA 50+ year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Author: 3rd Edition of the SampleSlabs book, https://sampleslabs.info/
That's a fair point, that the perceived value of an AI grading system could end up greater than human. That is why I say it would have to be a different scale for marketability purposes, to help differentiate perceived value.
Classic coins will be very noisy with results though, I don't think that can be overcome. Too expensive to accumulate data currently, still will have a pushback from collectors holding significant value material. Don't want to risk the AI grade. Moderns will work for sure, surprised if that is not in conception stages already.