Earlier this month, I attended both the Colorado Springs Coin Club Show and the ANA Summer Seminar as a scholarship recipient. I had one clear mission in mind: to gather honest feedback from the coin community about the utility of an automated AI coin-sorting robot.
At the show, attendees had the opportunity to get their hands on Numi. At Summer Seminar, I took the Advanced Coin Dealing course, taught by Rob Obert from Gold & Coin Exchange and Seth Chandler from Witter Coin. I got to demo Numi to the entire class, and both Rob and Seth were impressed and encouraged me to push Numi further.
The feedback from everyone was eye-opening. I heard everything from expanding beyond wheat cents to Mercury dimes and Buffalo Nickels, to the insight that larger coin shops would require a processing speed of 10,000+ coins per day for Numi to be valuable. People were consistently amazed that it only cost $6 to analyze 10,000 coins. A year ago, it would have been $100.
The top request? Physical sorting capability to automatically separate valuable finds from rejected coins. While Numi doesn't have this feature yet since it's an initial prototype, attendees could see past the current limitations and envision the future Numi promises. Physical sorting is the next planned feature.
The Advanced Coin Dealing course provided me with the most crucial insight for dealers; it's all about velocity and turnover. I specifically sought out this course because if Numi is going to be valuable to dealers, I need to understand how dealers think. It turns out that it's not enough for Numi to unlock additional revenue. It also has to unlock it quickly and profitably enough to justify their time.
The support I received from everyone went beyond just feedback. Multiple coin dealers offered to let me test Numi in their shops once I refine the next prototype, giving me exactly the real-world data I need to validate Numi's value proposition. After months of frustrating complex engineering, hearing the feedback, "Yeah, I think you have something here. Keep going. Let me know how I can help." meant everything. I'll keep pushing forward.
Even if Numi ultimately turns out not to be what our hobby needs, it's great to see it spark a conversation about the role that emerging technology like AI can play in making numismatics more accessible to all. As long as Numi continues to push conservation forward, all this time and effort will have been worth it.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Justin, aka Dansco Dude
