auctions Building an App for numismatists. Looking for feedback!

[mordehaus]

Hello everyone! I'm Art, a hobbyist-numismatist who also works full-time in IT. My journey into the world of coin collecting was largely influenced by my dad, who's a skilled coin restorer. Today, I'm excited to share a project that's been brewing in my mind for quite some time...

Disclaimer: I'm NOT here to sell anything, ask for financial support, or somehow monetize with this post. Instead, I'm genuinely seeking your feedback, and if the moderators permit this post, I'll be extremely grateful!

In a nutshell, I'm currently in the process of working out an idea for my new app. Just recently, I took the plunge and launched a website to provide an overview of its features – you can check it out at https://coinlectic.com.

My primary goal now is to actively seek your insights and opinions on this. I want to understand what potential users like you think about my concept, ascertain the value it can bring to the coin-collecting community, and determine if any adjustments or pivots are necessary. Your thoughts, no matter how big or small, would be immensely appreciated.

Ideally, I'm hoping to find someone willing to have a 20-30-minute conversation with me to delve deeper into their thoughts. If you decide to join me for a discussion, I'd be happy to give you a free one-year access to the app once I release it! Just let me know if the comments if that works with you.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this, and hope you hear back from you!

[Steppenfool]

Hello. Your website and the stills from the app certainly look very professional.

I'm wondering what it is that sets you apart from biddr to the point that it worth paying for a subscription? Biddr has most auctions on it and you can set reminders for auctions, or particular lots in the auctions that you receive via e-mail or text. You also have a choice to be reminded when your target is a chosen number of lots away. This is a service that comes with a free account.

[mordehaus]

By the way, just for context. This was my first topic on my app. Back then I was just trying to get ideas of different potential pains of numismatists and coin collectors.

And thanks to you guys, I was able to decide on an idea, build a product website talking about my app's features, and even finish my v1 of the app's user interface.

 

[mordehaus]

4 minutes ago, Steppenfool said:

Hello. Your website and the stills from the app certainly look very professional.

I'm wondering what it is that sets you apart from biddr to the point that it worth paying for a subscription? Biddr has most auctions on it and you can set reminders for auctions, or particular lots in the auctions that you receive via e-mail or text. You also have a choice to be reminded when your target is a chosen number of lots away. This is a service that comes with a free account.

Hi! Thank you for your interest, and that's a great point! Bidder comes as a standalone platform, it's quite big, and I guess it's primary focus is on Bidding on partner auctions. My approach is a bit different. I'm looking to build more of a "companion app" for coin collectors.

In its 1st stage, it is going to be just a simple reminder tool. You visit auctions you like, hit a button on a coin you want to be reminded of, and then get alerted in your browser or via phone (either Google Calendar or SMS, whatever you prefer). You can also customize the time of your alerts. And finally, you can have an overview coin details, as well as your past sales. 

Additionally, you can export your sales results in PDF for documentation which will look nice and professional.

I also plan to support more auction platforms vs. Bidder. And eventually, if this will gather user, I plan to evolve this app into a "control center for your coin collection activities" for things like consignment planning, coin management, custom library + knowledge management, AI coin look-up, etc. 

[kirispupis]

To be honest, the biggest feedback I'd have is simply the need. There are already sites that aggregate auctions (Biddr and sixbid) and there are sites that allow you to search past auction results (acsearch and coinarchives).

At least in my case, there's no need for auction reminders or to track my purchases. Pretty much every auction house offers reminders and I have no issues tracking my purchases in an Excel spreadsheet.

Perhaps coin sellers may have more use for this since they probably participate in many auctions at a time and have far more purchases to track, but then your customer base is max twenty people 🙂. For me, there's currently just one auction with active coins I'm interested in and I have about ten coins this week arriving, which I'll photograph and enter into my database this weekend. I have no need for software to help me there.

One thing you could add that would be valuable is the ability to place last second bids. You'd have to work with the auction houses on this, but I've always wondered how some manage this on sites like Roma. Their UI takes some time to load for me and I wouldn't dare waiting to the last second to place a bid there, so I'm not sure how so many do it. That would be a feature I'd pay for.

In terms of a project that would have merit, I'd absolutely love to see an equivalent of RPC Online for Greek coins. The sites I've seen have been an absolute mess. There needs to be a way to organize them so one could see all the possible types of - say Pellene - on one page, along with the appropriate attributions. It should be crowd sourced but obviously needs a few highly knowledgeable experts to ensure it doesn't become a mess.

[mordehaus]

3 minutes ago, kirispupis said:

To be honest, the biggest feedback I'd have is simply the need. There are already sites that aggregate auctions (Biddr and sixbid) and there are sites that allow you to search past auction results (acsearch and coinarchives).

At least in my case, there's no need for auction reminders or to track my purchases. Pretty much every auction house offers reminders and I have no issues tracking my purchases in an Excel spreadsheet.

Perhaps coin sellers may have more use for this since they probably participate in many auctions at a time and have far more purchases to track, but then your customer base is max twenty people 🙂. For me, there's currently just one auction with active coins I'm interested in and I have about ten coins this week arriving, which I'll photograph and enter into my database this weekend. I have no need for software to help me there.

One thing you could add that would be valuable is the ability to place last second bids. You'd have to work with the auction houses on this, but I've always wondered how some manage this on sites like Roma. Their UI takes some time to load for me and I wouldn't dare waiting to the last second to place a bid there, so I'm not sure how so many do it. That would be a feature I'd pay for.

In terms of a project that would have merit, I'd absolutely love to see an equivalent of RPC Online for Greek coins. The sites I've seen have been an absolute mess. There needs to be a way to organize them so one could see all the possible types of - say Pellene - on one page, along with the appropriate attributions. It should be crowd sourced but obviously needs a few highly knowledgeable experts to ensure it doesn't become a mess.

This is a great point, and thank you for your honesty! Placing last-second bids sounds like a pretty good idea, my dad was always b*tching about this. This would require additional hassle to negotiate with auction founders. Although doesn't seem like it's something impossible. 

My goal is to bring some great user experience and simplicity into this app, and also make it valuable to collectors. Numismatics is a super complex field, and there has to be an area that you can streamline, make easier, etc...

One year ago, I went on asking collectors about their struggles with numismatics/collecting, and that's what I found out:

• (11 respondents) Top 1 problem was about having a "Command Center" for coin collecting. Something that would provide a comprehensive and personalized overview AND Control over your hobby (things like keeping and managing coin inventory, consignment procedures, reports, resources, etc)
• (8 respondents) Top 2 problem was about having better sales visibility – people sometimes just forget of their upcoming sales, or they're tired of jumping from platform to platform just to check for notifications.

**There was a total of 26 respondents. 

But again, these are just my thoughts! And my pure intention here is to get to the bottom and talk with you fellows, figure out ways, and steer in the right direction!

Do you think the app would be more useful if, let's say, it was tailored and offered more features for coin research, provenance, etc? 

[Curtisimo]

I like the export to pdf function. I think you could take this to its natural conclusion and automate a process that saves entire e-Auctions + prices realized into pdf format in a polished way. Sometimes there are old and important collections that are sold together as part of an e-auction. For provenance and cataloging purposes it would be nice to have these sales in a personal digital library for reference.  This is currently only possible for printed auctions. 

Edited September 28, 2023 by Curtisimo

[kirispupis]

1 hour ago, mordehaus said:

Do you think the app would be more useful if, let's say, it was tailored and offered more features for coin research, provenance, etc? 

I would absolutely love a unified way to identify coins and lookup types. Many of the coins I specialize in are rare and I mostly rely on trying to find research papers and past sales. Very often I have a question such as "show me all the types for Selge". Today, I have the following options.

• Look for past sales on ACSearch, where of course many are misattributed. This is usually how I attribute my coins. I try to find several listings that agree on the attribution and copy one.
• Check Numista - https://en.numista.com/catalogue/perge-1.html. I almost never find what I'm looking for there.
• Check wildwinds - https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/pisidia/selge/i.html. This isn't bad, but is a complete mess and it's often missing types or has incorrect attributions.
• Lookup the city on Snible - https://snible.org/coins/hn/pisidia.html#712 - this is the most authoritative source, but lacks photos. It's also missing many of the rarer types.

IMHO, the only proper way to do this is similar to what they do for RPC - allow anyone to submit coins, but have a group of experts who own categorizing them. 

Provenance is trickier and there are already sites dedicated to that.

[mordehaus]

On 9/28/2023 at 11:16 PM, kirispupis said:

I would absolutely love a unified way to identify coins and lookup types. Many of the coins I specialize in are rare and I mostly rely on trying to find research papers and past sales. Very often I have a question such as "show me all the types for Selge". Today, I have the following options.

• Look for past sales on ACSearch, where of course many are misattributed. This is usually how I attribute my coins. I try to find several listings that agree on the attribution and copy one.
• Check Numista - https://en.numista.com/catalogue/perge-1.html. I almost never find what I'm looking for there.
• Check wildwinds - https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/pisidia/selge/i.html. This isn't bad, but is a complete mess and it's often missing types or has incorrect attributions.
• Lookup the city on Snible - https://snible.org/coins/hn/pisidia.html#712 - this is the most authoritative source, but lacks photos. It's also missing many of the rarer types.

IMHO, the only proper way to do this is similar to what they do for RPC - allow anyone to submit coins, but have a group of experts who own categorizing them. 

Provenance is trickier and there are already sites dedicated to that.

These are all good ideas. I think partnering with an authoritative source like Snible could be very beneficial. This does sound like a lot of work, but in future, this seems like a very viable feature to have. Coin Identification is like #1 challenge among collectors. 

[mordehaus]

On 9/28/2023 at 10:42 PM, Curtisimo said:

I like the export to pdf function. I think you could take this to its natural conclusion and automate a process that saves entire e-Auctions + prices realized into pdf format in a polished way. Sometimes there are old and important collections that are sold together as part of an e-auction. For provenance and cataloging purposes it would be nice to have these sales in a personal digital library for reference.  This is currently only possible for printed auctions. 

Yes! I thought it could be useful too! Sometimes people just want to store their reports on paper somewhere in their Cabinet. Thanks for suggesting on the "Provenance" field btw, I'll make a note to myself to add this as part of this feature.