Everything, Answered

Windows 10 or Windows 11, 64-bit. 8 GB of memory is enough for everyday work and 16 GB is comfortable. A graphics card is optional: the 3D viewer, the depth map and the alignment in Precision Compare run faster on an NVIDIA card with CUDA, and everything else runs on the processor. Allow 10 GB of free disk at the least, and far more once the photographs pile up. The program has a built-in requirements check that tells you where your own machine stands.

Not at present. It is a native Windows application. It has been reported to run under Parallels and under Wine, but neither is supported and camera passthrough is the usual sticking point.

Mostly not. Examination, measurement, grading, the collection database and printing all work with no network at all. The license is checked once, when you activate it, and never again. The optional ChatGPT and Claude windows, Numista lookups and the variety-lookup browser need a connection. A phone used as the camera needs your own Wi-Fi, not the internet.

Yes. Every analysis tool works on a saved photograph as well as on the live view. Open a folder or a coin from your collection and the tools read the selected picture.

It gives you a range, and it is careful about what that means. Quick Reference lists the error and variety types, 76 key dates across six denominations and 77 doubled dies, each with a low and a high estimate, the grade span that range covers, and the published source the figure came from. What it will NOT do is tell you what your coin is worth: it cannot see your coin and does not know its grade, and the gap between two adjacent grades on a key date is frequently larger than a modest collection. Use it to learn what exists and roughly what is at stake; use a grading service when money depends on the answer.

No. Every photograph is inside the program, downloaded once when the program was built. A microscope, a lamp and a laptop that never sees a network is an ordinary bench, and a reference that goes blank there is no reference at all. Where no photograph of a variety could be found, the row shows a placeholder rather than a similar-looking coin - a wrong picture is worse than none, because somebody would compare their coin against it.

A coin examination and collection program. It drives your microscope, renders the coin surface fifteen different ways so faults jump out, measures the actual shape of the metal from a light set, a focus sweep or a polarizing filter, reads what you find on a calibrated scale, helps you place a grade, catalogs each coin with its photos and value, prints 2x2 labels and flip cards, and includes a numismatic reference library. The microscope is the input; the program is everything that happens after the shutter.

Each one makes a different kind of fault obvious. Raking light swings a virtual lamp so you can see whether a line is raised or incuse by which way its shadow falls. Relief exaggerates height. Contour map draws lines of equal brightness, so doubling shows as a second contour running parallel. Crack scan, micro detail, edges, flow direction, heat map, depth map, negative, solarize, polarize and mono each isolate something else. They are ways of LOOKING, and the measurements are always taken from the real pixels rather than from a view.

It gives you the tools to prove it. Hub doubling puts a second image of the device on the die, shifted by a small, nearly constant amount, so the outline test traces the walls of every letter and slides that outline over itself looking for a shift that repeats all the way around. It only counts a match when the wall on both sides faces the same way, which is what stops a fat letter from passing as a doubled one. The relief test then asks the question that settles it: is the second image a real rounded crest at close to full height (hub doubling), or a low flat shelf of shoved metal (machine doubling)?

When the separated-ghost test found it, yes: that test reports the spread it measured, in pixels, or in microns once the scope is calibrated. The outline test tells you how much of the device carries the second image but leaves the distance off, because when it was checked against a coin with an independently established separation it came back at about half the true value. No number beats a wrong number.

It carries the confirmed VAM listings with their die markers described, so you can work through them with your coin right there under the lens. The attribution itself is yours to make, because it rests on marker positions that need a human eye.

It will estimate a grade and show you exactly what that estimate rests on, which is the fun part. It measures wear on the design’s high points, retained relief, luster, contact marks, strike sharpness and hairlines, and puts each number beside the range the Sheldon scale expects for it, read from the same grade ladder the estimate is scored against. So you can see which measurements agree with the grade and which pull the other way.

Please don’t. A grade from one photo can’t see the coin tilt in your hand, which is how grading is really done, and it can’t reliably tell a cleaned coin from an original one. Treat it as a second opinion that shows its work, and send anything valuable to a grading service.

Because the diagnostics do not always agree, and that disagreement is information. If wear says XF-40 while luster says Fine-12, something is unusual about the coin or about the lighting, and knowing which number is the odd one out tells you where to look.

Because luster is a structure, not a shine. It’s microscopic flow lines from the strike, and they light up only when the lamp lies across their grain. A flat, diffuse light shows almost no luster on a coin that has plenty. Trust the figure when you compare two coins shot the same way. For the real thing, shoot a light set with the lamp moved between shots and watch the cartwheel sweep around.

Calibrate once, three possible ways: against a coin whose diameter you know, by dragging along a steel rule or stage micrometer, or by storing a scale for each magnification setting of your scope. After that the on-screen caliper reads in millimeters and microns, and diameter can be checked against the specification database.

The measurement is as good as the calibration and the focus. A stage micrometer will get you within a few microns; a catalog nominal diameter will not, because the coin in your hand is not exactly nominal. The program reports what it measured, not what it hopes.

Yes, three independent ways. From a light set, where the lamp genuinely moved between shots (photometric stereo). From a focus series, where each point’s height is the lens position where it was sharpest. And from a polarizing filter turned to three or more angles, since the polarization of reflected light depends on the tilt of the surface. Those are real measurements, and when two methods with different weak spots agree, that’s worth a lot. The single-photograph depth estimate is a guess and is labeled as one.

In ordinary folders on your own drive, inside a collection root you choose. Each coin gets its own folder, named so a set reads as a set in Explorer with no software at all, and the camera settings that took each shot are recorded alongside it.

They go into a Pending folder, one folder per coin, and nothing is filed or given a SKU until you say what the coin is. If you close the program part way through a coin, it comes back to that same coin next time you open it.

Photographs, year, denomination, series, variety, grade, cost, current value, provenance, notes, the physical storage location where the coin actually sits, and a SKU that never changes.

Photographs are written to a temporary name, flushed to the disk, and only then renamed into place. A crash mid-write leaves a partial file with a temporary name that is cleaned up later; it cannot leave you with a half-written photograph under a real name. A crash also never deletes pending work.

Yes. The photographs are standard image files and the records export as text. Nothing is held in a format only this program can read.

Yes, to a thermal label printer over USB or Bluetooth, and to any ordinary printer. The label carries the coin details, your own name or business name, the storage location, and the SKU as a scannable Code 128 barcode.

If Windows has it installed as a printer, yes. CoinScope Pro prints through Windows rather than talking to the hardware directly, so USB and Bluetooth are the same problem as far as it is concerned, and you pick the printer from a list.

Custom 2x2 inserts you design yourself, with your own graphics, any font on your machine, and whatever content you like on each side, for instance the coin history on one face and your contact details on the other. A whole page prints front and back with the two sides aligned, and a design can be saved against an individual coin.

It will draft listing copy from the coin record and the measurements you have taken. You edit it before it goes anywhere.

A quick reference you consult while a coin is under the lens: the error and variety chart with estimated values, the key dates by denomination with their catalog numbers, and the doubled dies - each row with a photograph where one could be found, and every source cited. The VAM listings for Morgan and Peace dollars come with it as well. All of it works with no internet connection.

The descriptions are written for this program. The value ranges were gathered from published price guides and auction records, including PCGS, and the photographs come from public-domain collections and variety catalogs. Every figure and every photograph names its source in the program.

No subscription. It is $199.99, paid once, for a license that never expires. Updates are included for the life of the product, and nothing ever bills again. Promo codes may be available.

Three. One key activates on three computers, and reinstalling on a computer that already has it does not use one up. If you need more, email support@coinscopepro.com with the email address you bought it with and the last four digits of the card you paid with, and the key gets re-issued.

Yes, a free one. The download and the 5-day trial both use a free account on this site (no card). Buying adds your key and orders to the same account. You sign in to the program only once, to activate it: with your account email and password, or with your key and the code we email you, under Help, then License.

Twice at most, and then never again. Once to start the trial, and once to activate your key: you enter the key, a six-digit code is emailed to the address you bought it with, and you enter that too. After that one check it runs offline for good, with no check-ins.

Yes, five days, free, in the same installer everyone downloads. It needs a free coinscopepro.com account (no card) and the internet once to start. The trial has about a third of the program: the camera and live view, capture, the photo strip, My Collection, Add to Collection, labels, Reference Comparison and the mint mark check. The doubling tools, edges, the heat map and several other views, the reports, the ChatGPT and Claude windows, the Advanced, Image Lab and Light Science tabs and the rest of the experimental tools come with a key, and entering one unlocks them in place, no reinstall. It exists so you can check the program works with your own microscope before spending anything.

It is not tracking you - there is no telemetry and no analytics of any kind - but it does contact the server, so here is exactly what for. Once to start the trial, and once to activate a key, sending the key, the emailed code and a fingerprint derived from your hardware. That is the whole of it. Your photographs, your collection, your measurements and the coins you own stay on your computer. After activation it never checks again; it runs fully offline for good. The only other thing that ever leaves your machine is a bug report or a feature request, and that carries only what you typed into it.

No. Captures come out clean. Screen recordings of the program itself carry a mark, which is a different thing from a photograph of your coin.

Only if you deliberately send it to ChatGPT or Claude in the built-in browser, which you drive yourself. The measuring tools are all local. The features that run a trained model do it on your own machine: the depth map, the super-resolution upscale, the optical flow in Precision Compare and the optional object-detection overlay, which downloads its model once the first time you turn it on.

Close anything else using it, since Windows gives a camera to one program at a time, then check the camera privacy setting under Windows Settings. The program also has a requirements check that reports what it can see.

It needs either a live camera or a photograph on the bench. Open a coin from your collection, or pick a photograph in the strip under the live view, then run the tool again.

A blurred photograph depresses the relief measurement and drags the estimate down with it, which is why the program warns you when strike sharpness falls below a threshold. Refocus and run it again before believing the grade.

Frame a single device tightly, a letter or a digit rather than the whole coin, and make sure the lettering fills a good part of the frame. The doubling tools cannot see doubling narrower than about six pixels of separation, so magnification matters. A crop dominated by the rim can also mislead it, because concentric arcs at constant spacing look locally like a second image.

Three things, in order of how much they matter. Light it from the side rather than from the front, because a shadow is what makes relief visible and a coin lit head-on looks flat. Get the coin square to the lens, or one side of it will be out of focus however carefully you focus the other. Then use the focus peaking and the focus meter: peaking outlines what is actually in the plane of focus, and the meter tells you when you have found the sharpest point of the knob's travel rather than a point that merely looks sharp on a small preview.

Use the quadrant sweep. It walks the coin in a grid so every area is covered, naming the frames so the set stays in order. For a general view, back the scope off to its lowest magnification first - a microscope at full zoom is for a device, not for a coin.

Focus stacking. Turn the focus knob slowly from one extreme of the coin's relief to the other while it records, and it keeps whichever frame was sharpest at each individual pixel. What comes out is one photograph sharp across the rim and the devices together, which no single exposure at that magnification can be.

The detail stack. It aligns each incoming frame to a reference and keeps a running average, so random sensor noise cancels out while real detail reinforces. Hold everything still and give it a few seconds.

Open the phone camera panel and scan the QR code it shows. The phone streams its camera to the program over your own Wi-Fi, with nothing to install on the phone. Both devices have to be on the same network, and your phone will warn you about the security certificate the first time - that is expected, because the certificate is generated on your own machine.

Connect it by USB and open the camera panel. If you would rather shoot the way you already do, point the folder watcher at wherever your camera software saves its files and every photograph that appears is filed into the open coin automatically, raw files included.

Watch the live histogram before you press the shutter. If it is piled against the right-hand edge the luster has been clipped, and no amount of editing afterward will bring it back, because the camera recorded nothing there. Lower the light or the exposure until the brightest part sits just short of the edge.

Photograph the doubled area at as much magnification as you can hold steady, then run the doubling tools. Two independent tests run and the verdict goes to whichever one fires, which matters because light doubling and heavy hub doubling look nothing alike. Then run the relief test, because that is what separates a doubled die from machine doubling: a struck secondary image stands at full height, and machine doubling is a flat shelf.

By height, not by shape. Doubling that was in the die was struck into the coin, so it has rounded relief of its own. Machine doubling happened as the die bounced coming out, so it is a flat shelf shaved off the edge of the device. The program measures the profile across the suspect edge and shows you the profile it read, so you can check the reasoning rather than take the verdict on trust. It will refuse to answer if the lighting is too flat to establish relief at all, which is a real answer and not a failure.

Whether it is raised or incuse, which the line tools report for every line they trace. A crack in the die leaves a RAISED line on the coin, because metal flowed into the crack. A scratch was cut into the coin afterward, so it is incuse. Raking light shows the same thing by eye: swing the virtual lamp and a raised line throws its shadow the opposite way to an incuse one.

Run the cleaning scan. A wiped or polished coin carries fine scratches running in roughly one direction, because a hand moves in one direction. Be careful with the result in both directions: die polish is also directional and is not damage at all, and a skillfully cleaned coin can pass. It is a reason to look closely, not a verdict.

The tools do that for you now. On a well-framed shot the coin is about half the frame and the rest is mat, and a mat under a microscope lamp is often the strongest texture in the picture - which wrecks any measurement that sets its thresholds from the whole frame. The analysis tools isolate the coin first and say in the status bar that they have. If no round coin is found, the frame is used as it is, because a slab or a close-up of one device is what you meant to measure.

Alignment Lab, then Precision Compare. Alignment Lab lines the photographs up to sub-pixel accuracy inside a region you choose; Precision Compare then removes the things that masquerade as differences - lighting change, sub-pixel misregistration, sensor noise - before reporting anything. Comparing two raw photographs mostly measures your lamp.

Open it from the strip under the picture, or pick a coin out of the collection and put it back on the bench. Every tool works on a photograph exactly as it does on the live feed. If one photograph is selected in the strip that one wins; otherwise whatever is open in the reviewer is used; otherwise the live view.

Photograph it first and identify it afterward. Shots taken before you have said what the coin is wait in a Pending folder, one folder per coin, and nothing is filed or given a SKU until you say what it is. That order is deliberate: at a show or on a roll search you photograph far more than you will keep.

It is in the collection tab, searchable by anything recorded about it - date, denomination, series, variety, grade, where it is stored, or its SKU. The program also reopens on the coin you last worked on, so a session interrupted halfway through picks up where it stopped.

A hundred. It used to be twenty, which was nowhere near enough - a zoom survey and a quadrant sweep together run to dozens of frames before anybody has photographed a variety marker.

Five ways, because they answer five different questions. CSV goes into somebody else's program. HTML goes to a family member or an insurer who will not install anything. Excel is what most collectors actually keep a ledger in. PDF is for printing. Or take a copy of the database itself. Nothing is locked in.

Use the database backup, and know that your collection, photographs and reports already live OUTSIDE the program folder by design - so uninstalling, reinstalling or letting a license lapse never touches them. Keep one copy somewhere other than the same disk; that part is still yours to do.

The flip label prints to a thermal printer over USB or Bluetooth, or to any ordinary printer. It carries the coin details, your name or business name, the storage location, and the SKU as a scannable barcode so the shelf and the software always agree. You can have one print automatically at the moment you file the coin.

On the measurement tools. It only reads in millimeters once the scope is calibrated - before that every distance is in pixels, and a pixel is a property of your camera rather than of the coin.

In the measurement section, three ways: against a coin whose diameter you know, by dragging along a steel rule or a stage micrometer, or by storing a scale for each magnification setting of your scope so it is ready next time. A stage micrometer is worth the few dollars it costs if you intend to quote measurements to anybody.

In a folder per coin, outside the program directory, named so a set reads as a set even in Windows Explorer. File then Open captures folder takes you straight there.

Under Help, VAMs - Morgan and Peace dollar die varieties. Pick the date, pick the VAM, and the right-hand pane lists the diagnostic markers one at a time with where on the coin to look for each.

Under the three-dimensional tools. It needs either a focus series - the same view shot five to fifteen times while you turn the focus knob - or a photometric light set, where you move the lamp between shots. Those are measurements. The single-photograph depth estimate is in the experimental tools instead, because it is a guess and is labeled as one.

The Controls page has every slider, and there are dozens of them. If that is not what you want, the preset adjustments are a short list of named things to do to a picture, each a toggle and a slider - the same work without needing to know what CLAHE tone mapping is.

Help, then About. Quote it in any bug report - it is the single most useful line in one.

It is shown on screen right after you buy and emailed to you. It is also kept in My Account on the website, under Licenses, along with how many of its three installs are used.

Each view carries its own legend saying exactly that, and hovering over a color tells you what it represents in that particular view. They are not consistent between views on purpose: a heat map and a depth map are answering different questions and sharing a color scale would imply they are comparable.

Each measurement is printed beside the range the Sheldon scale expects for it, so you can see which diagnostics agree with the estimate and which pull against it. The disagreement is the useful part - if wear says XF while luster says Fine, something is odd about the coin or about the lighting, and that is worth knowing before you send it anywhere.

How unusual this coin looks, from 0 to 1, with the reasons behind it. It deliberately does not name the error - naming is your job. It is a reason to stop and look, never a finding, and a low score is not a clean bill of health.

That a round coin was found and the mat has been excluded before measuring. If it says the frame was used untouched, no round coin was found - a slab, a coin cut off by the frame, or a close-up of one device - and in each of those cases what you framed is what you wanted measured anyway.

Because it could not honestly reach one, and saying so is the design. A tool that always produces a number teaches you to trust numbers that are sometimes invented. When a tool reports nothing, it is telling you it had nothing it could stand behind, not that it failed.

Because the figure would be wrong. Where the outline test is the one that found the doubling, the separation was checked against a device whose true offset could be established three independent ways and came back at about half the real value - so it is withheld rather than printed.

Open a support ticket from My Account. It comes to me, Jen, and you get an actual answer, not a tracking number. You can also email support@coinscopepro.com.

Nobody but me gets in there, on purpose. Everything you need lives in My Account: your licenses, billing details and support tickets. Keeping the dashboard closed is the simplest way to keep your details safe.

See and edit your billing and account details, read your license keys and how many installs each has used, look at your orders, raise and read support tickets, and request a feature.

Install it on the new one and enter your key. One key covers three computers, so a new PC usually just takes the next one. If all three are used, email support@coinscopepro.com with the email address you bought it with and the last four digits of the card you paid with, and the key gets re-issued. It takes a moment to sort out.

In My Account, under account details and payment methods respectively.

No, and it never will. Your photographs, database and reports live outside the program folder and are yours. After five days the trial stops working except for two things: entering a key, and exporting your photographs and database. Coin photography is often unrepeatable once a coin is sold or slabbed, and holding your own pictures hostage would be indefensible.

Raise a support ticket from My Account, or email support@coinscopepro.com. Fill in as much as you can: the version, what you did step by step, and what you expected instead are the three things that decide whether a bug can be reproduced, and a bug that can be reproduced is usually a bug that gets fixed.

Yes, please do. Every customer and every tester can, from My Account. Most of what’s in the program now started as somebody saying it should be.

No. The people most likely to notice what is missing are often the ones still deciding whether to buy.

The problem behind it. Describe what you are trying to do and why it is awkward now, not only the solution you had in mind - the underlying problem often has a better answer than either of us first thought of.

Every request gets read, and its status shows in My Account: received, triaged, planned, or not planned. I’d rather give you a straight “not planned” than leave a request hanging for a year.

Check it appears in the Windows Camera app first - if Windows cannot see it, neither can CoinScope Pro. Close anything else using the camera, because Windows generally gives a webcam to one program at a time. Then try a different USB port, preferring one directly on the machine over a hub.

That is probably the hardware, not the program. A USB microscope is a webcam, and most of them expose no real exposure or gain control at all - so what you are adjusting is the picture after the fact. The program says which controls are real for your device rather than pretending they all are. A DSLR or mirrorless body gives you genuine control.

Open Settings and check the AI tabs option. The panels normally run inside the program; there is an option to run them in a real Edge or Chrome window instead, which depends on Windows docking that window into the panel, and when that fails the tab looks empty and the browser window is left behind the program. Turning it off puts the panels back inside.

That is usually the embedded web engine failing on that machine. Contact support and it can be started with the ChatGPT and Claude windows left out, which gets you running while the cause is found.

The program noticed the system clock moving backwards. Set the clock correctly - ideally to sync automatically. A purchased license is not affected; the trial is counted by our server, not by your clock, so changing the date never adds days to it.

Yes. A license is checked once, when you activate it, and never again - CoinScope Pro runs offline for good after that. Only starting the trial and activating a key need the internet.

Check the calibration first - an uncalibrated scope reports pixels, and a nominal catalog diameter is not the diameter of the coin in your hand. Then check the zoom: analysis starts from the whole frame, and if a tool has been handed a digitally zoomed picture it is measuring part of the coin and calling it the coin. Please report it either way.