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 Replies: 14 / Views: 1,487 |
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New Member
United States
2 Posts |
A friend and I have built an automated coin sorter. It identifies coins of interest and can process a half million coins per month. And can scale to a million coins per week.
This was a little bit of build it and they will come. Any suggestions how we might take this to market?
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Moderator
 United States
56855 Posts |
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Moderator
United States
187702 Posts |
 to the Community! |
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Moderator
United States
94812 Posts |
First step is to get a patent for your idea/machine.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19119 Posts |
I assume were talking about US coins--distinguishing by denomination?
'Identifying by interest'--If I'm interested in separating wheat cents from copper memorial cents, would that be possible? Zinc memorial cents from zinc shield cents?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6507 Posts |
Quote:
It identifies coins of interest Do tell  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5604 Posts |
Best Wishes... Sounds Interesting Mistake Percentages ?
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Pillar of the Community
 Canada
1770 Posts |
Wow, I wish you luck, but not many folks sort a half million coins a month. Just saying, it may be a limited market.
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Bedrock of the Community
Canada
24885 Posts |
To the Forum. |
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New Member
 United States
2 Posts |
We are getting a patent.
It is designed to process all of one denomination in a run. It finds specific years and mint marks.
It may be set like this for pennies for example:
Find all wheat ear pennies.
And all 1992 - Denver Mint Lincoln Memorial Pennies
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
1985 Posts |
Quote:
Any suggestions how we might take this to market? Maybe get them installed in banks. Customers can run their coins through them and keep the coins they're looking for that it spits out and deposit the rest of the coins straight into their bank account. |
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Valued Member
United States
397 Posts |
Normally, before you spend money on R&D, you need to identify a market need first. But I realize not all people, especially innovators and engineers, think like that. Like what other posters have said, this is a very niche market, if you're looking to target consumers. Just think why would anyone, including collectors, need a machine like that? You can target B2B customers, but that would take a long time, and normally they wouldn't give 2 guys in a garage the time of day. The banks have existing contracts with vendors who do this kind of sorting for them, by denomination, that is. Or think Coinstar. There's really no need for a machine that can find a Wheat cent or Buffalo nickel, because banks don't care about that. I assume what you and your buddy have created is some type of contraption that has a mechanical component for rough sorting and also a camera with proprietary code that uses image/video processing to identify certain coins. Just from an engineering perspective, you would also need to figure out how accurate the machine is, since there's all kinds of damage and gunk that could affect what a coin looks like. But for collectors, your machine basically takes the fun out of coin rolling hunting. Honestly, I just don't see a market for something like this. I wouldn't even spend the money to apply for a patent. But, just my $0.02. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7933 Posts |
Some initial thoughts ...
1. The current market is coin roll hunters, who are not going to pay for this (because they are not paying anything now).
2. So if you really want to sell this technology, YOU need to demonstrate its value to potential investors..
Since you are asking the question here, I will guess that you're not sure how to do this.
It's a not too complicated business school exercise in ROI calculation, based on certain assumptions.
Is that what you are looking for?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7933 Posts |
Follow up question:
Do you have real data on the results of your coin processing technology turning up cons of VALUE (as opposed to coins of INTEREST) ?
If you don't, I think you have some work to do.
You can hope to get potential buyers to invest on a promise of what they might find, but data on what you did find is always going to be more compelling.
Just so you know I'm not just posing as The Grinch, I worked in product development for 25 years, so I have a bit of perspective.
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Moderator
United States
54280 Posts |
Can you post a picture of your prototype machine?
How much do you think you will have to charge for a machine?
Show your financial support of the Coin Community Family (click here)See my topic on Mexican Numismatic Medals (click here) |
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Replies: 14 / Views: 1,487 |
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Posted 01/16/2023 3:20 pm
