Motivation for this Project

By: Rick Bassett   -   email: me@rickbassett.com

I have been an on again / off again coin collector for the past 40 years since I was 5 years old when I was introduced to hobby by my late Grandmother. I have been intrigued by United States coins ever since as I am fascinated by the journeys that circulating coinage take, the history they represent and the artistic beauty of certain US coinage series.

When I was young I used to be able to pull rather decent finds from circulation. Having a paper route in the 60's & 70's really allowed me to fill in many of the holes in those Blue Whitman Coin Albums for the later series  pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. It wasn't uncommon at all to find silver coins in circulation through the early 1970's. In fact I sold many of these common date silver coins at the top of the silver market in 1980 to finance a year of college and a nice stereo system (I still have the college education incidentally).

As time passed circulation finds became scarcer and about the only way to continue collecting was to purchase coins. When pulling coins from circulation the risk was limited to the face value of the coins but purchasing coins from others such as the US Mint, dealers, hoarders or other collectors almost always involves paying significant multiples, or premiums, over the face value of a coin.

Thus knowledge becomes an important factor in modern coin collecting as you can not just blindly purchase items that are offered without having a minimal understanding of what you are buying, what the real value is and how trusted the selling source is. Purchasing blindly, which I have done many times, comes with the perils of over-paying, buying an over-graded coin, purchasing altered coins and various other traps that have a way of  separating you from your money.   

I realized that understanding how to properly grade coins is extremely important as the grade (or condition) of the collectible contributes significantly to determining the value. That is the higher the grade, the higher the value of the coin. This is most significant with rare coins than it is with common date coins as a single grade difference can mean hundreds or thousands of dollars.

I have also come to realize that there is great inconsistency and disagreement in grading setting even by expert collectors and the 3rd party grading services. There are many reason reasons for this inconsistency but that those are best elaborated on in a dissertation (hey I think that I will do that). Hence the #1 reason for me wanting to come up with a computer system of grading: Consistent Grading.

At least 2 other companies have taken a stab at computerized grading in the early 90's (PCGS & Compugrade) as commercial ventures. Both of the companies disbanded computerized grading once they realized that in order to get it to a high level commercial success their ROI (Return on Investment) models would not hold up. That is while it was probably possible to get their systems working with a high degree of accuracy, it would cost far more than it would be worth in terms of potential profits.

Since this project is strictly an academic exercise in research and problem solving with little costs involved there is no ROI to be concerned with I can focus on the development of technology for the betterment of the hobby without the concern of stockholders or stakeholders looking over my shoulder. Essentially this technology can be developed for the love of game (or hobby in this case) rather than for profit. 

It is my hope that the technology developed in this project will be such that collectors and dealers are able use it to do collectibles grading on their own computers without the need for overly expensive software or hardware.   

I do expect that this project will continue on for several years post dissertation as the pool of domain knowledge is so large.

Last Modified:  04/25/10