JUSTIN HINH ON THE BUSINESS OF COIN GRADING

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V29 2026 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 29, Number 30, 2026, Article 15

Artificial Intelligence keeps getting better and better, and coin identification and grading are tough problems, with subjectivity and moneymaking concerns creeping into the mix for the latter. Will the two ever meet? While computerized grading has been tried and failed before, that's no reason to assume progress can't be made with today's impressive technology.

The above article from the new company Vardera shows some of that progress, but will it be enough to win the day? One thing I'd liked about their business plan is their goal of providing a scalable infrastructure to third-party graders and large dealers and marketplaces. highlights from their earlier article include:

Grading Bodies Need Scalable Coin Condition Analysis at Scale
AI Coin Grading at Production Scale: From Consumer App to API Infrastructure
Augmenting Human Graders, Not Replacing Them

I reached out to Justin Hinh, who's been working with AI in numismatics for a while now. Here are his thoughts. -Editor

Technology people like myself are notorious for believing that any problem can be solved with better technology. I don't blame collectors [whether that's coins, cards, or video games] who feel that AI grading & authentication is the future. Go to any club or show and you'll see that everyone has an opinion on third-party graders (TPGs) and what they're doing wrong.

Everyone is missing the forest for the trees. What I'll say next is heretical, but accurate grades are irrelevant in the functioning of the coin industry. What really greases the wheels is the ease with which coin dealers & companies can liquidate [i.e. buy & sell] their coins and how fast their turnover is. A PCGS/NGC/CAC/ANACS slabbed coin is valuable not because the grade on the slab is accurate, but because the entire coin industry's infrastructure has established clear rules that make it easy to buy & sell coins confidently enough that millions in daily transactions are done with coins sight unseen. Dealers won't pay you MS-61 prices for a computer-graded coin if it takes twice as long to sell and only at AU-58 prices.

The market will never replace market grading with technical grading, no matter how accurate AI models get. It simply does not make industry players more money than with the current system. AI models won't actually help sellers make more money since there's no TPG standing behind those grading opinions to spur market liquidity.

I can't see the TPGs taking the risk of conflating technical grading with their own subjective market grading. If the TPGs embrace objective technical grading, it would commoditize grades and erode any distinction between the TPGs. The only way for them to stand out in the marketplace would be to offer the lowest price.

I recently gave a talk about the history of AI grading and how AI is negatively impacting the hobby. I came across five patents filed by PCGS/Collectors Universe since 2021 specifically for identifying and grading collectibles using specially trained AI models.

AI isn't the "new kid" in numismatics; it's been failing here since the 1990s, leaving behind a trail of dead companies and ignored patents. While the current hype fixates on technical hurdles, the real story is a collision of market dynamics and a growing "trust gap" fueled by clickbait apps and bad data. We're cutting through that noise to show exactly where AI can actually solve problems for the hobby instead of just creating more. Speaker: Justin Hinh.