Recognizing Coins with Seeing AI

The constant struggle of a blind coin collector is how to identify a coin.

The easy way is, ask somebody what it is. But it is not all that simple. It is not other people’s hobby after all, and I can’t expect to have somebody around to help me all the time. Over the years using experience and technology I have perfected my methods, but of course, it will be impossible to identify all coins without vision. I just found a new method which will greatly help me identify coins much more independently.

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Collecting in Brazil

100 Reais
I got fascinated with Brazil early in my life. I was about 10 when I have come across a book by Gabor Molnar, adventures in the Amazonas. It was about a Hungarian young man, who went to Brazil at the end of the 1920’s to hunt and collect animals to send to the Hungarian National Museum, which by the way hosts the largest numismatic collection in Hungary. The book was in Hungarian, and it was, I exactly remember, 14 braille volumes. It took me months to read through it, and I could not put it down. I think by the time I finished it, I could say I learned to read. Brazil from about 100 years ago, just fascinated me with its culture, language and nature.
100 Reais

Later at the university I started learning Portuguese, but the European dialect, so when it ever came to European or Brazilian, I always picked the European, so somehow I got very interested in Portugal, and Brazil got on the back burner. Today that little Portuguese I speak is mostly European.
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Visiting the Numismatic Museum of Iceland

Waterfall
It was a very unusual start for a trip. In a long time, the first time I wasn’t traveling for business. Just recently they introduced a daily flight from Cleveland to Reykjavik. At home we have talked about it, soon after which My daughter, Emily brought home a book from the library about Iceland, and a few days later she started telling people that I’m taking her to Iceland. I had no idea where she got the idea from, but we talked about it with my wife, and it sounded like the perfect vacation idea. As always, I checked if there was a money museum there, and sure enough, there was one.

A few weeks before we left for Iceland, I sent an email to the Numismatic Museum, which is part of the Icelandic National Museum. In a couple of days I got a response that our family is welcome to attend a tour at the Museum at the time of our choosing. This was very generous, especially because we found out that the museum’s curator, Mr. Sigurður Pálmason came in to meet us during his vacation.
Iceland 5 Kronur

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Harvester: copy information about coins from Numista into Excel

Introduction

My primary coin collection is cataloged in Excel. I like to record all kinds of information about my coins, mostly found in Numista, but until now I had to copy it by hand from Numista into the Excel sheet. This takes quite a bit of time, so I wrote an excel Macro which is able to transfer most of the data from Numista in less than 10 seconds per coin. If you struggled with the same problem, you can download and use my macro.

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Reflections on the fifth birthday of the blog

It has been five years that I started this blog. It feels like it was just now. First, I have to say it has given me so much, before you wonder, mostly because of the people I met through the blog. For some nostalgy, this is how it all started.

Soon after I started it, a guy sent me an email from Australia, who is also a visually impaired collector. Today I can call him a great friend, and our relationship extended much farther than just collecting friends, though we never got collecting off the table. We even had a chance to meet a couple of times, as it turned out we work in the same industry, so we attended a couple of conferences together mostly just by accident. I also met people who were interested in the blog, with some I have exchanged coins, and I think it also helped me to be invited to speak at some clubs, I will never know for sure. Recently I have visited many places, and I think my blog also helped me to get some appointments in museums where they could see I was serious about it. This, I will not know either, but it happened several times that people who hosted me in museums knew my blog inside out.
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Dora de Pedery-Hunt

Dora de Pedery-Hunt is known to be the first Canadian designing the effigy of the queen, but it is a less known fact that she was also Hungarian. I have heard her name before, but given her last name I never thought that she was Hungarian, until I had a dinner with Kevin Day-Thorburn in Fredericton a few months ago. He was telling me a little bit about her, and it sparked my interest, so I wanted to know more. As I was researching, it was hard to find much information about her, most resources tend to refer to the same information, which is, however, interesting.

Centennial Medal 1
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The Silver Hungarian 200 Forint

In 1992, an exciting new coin showed up in Hungary, a 200 Forint, KM #689. Such a denomination didn’t exist in recent currency, but even more interesting, it was a silver coin. In 1994, this coin was replaced by another design, KM #707, also made of silver. The reason was believed that the original contained more silver than the value of the coin.

200 Forint reverse with National Bank

The first coin had the national bank on the reverse, the second had Ferenc Deak, so it was very easy to tell the two coins apart.

200 Forint reverse with Ferenc Deak

After the first coin was discontinued, people started talking about how it contained more silver, and later in the 1990’s, these 200 Forint coins sold for as high as 20000 forints in circulated condition, even at the time it was close to $100.

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