Illegal trade and theft of coins appears to be a major part of the illegal antiques market. Image based recognition of coins could substantially contribute to fight against it. Central component in the permanent identification and traceability of coins is the underlying classification and identification technology. However, currently available algorithms focus basically on the recognition of modern coins. To date, no optical recognition system for ancient coins has been researched successfully. In this paper, we give an overview over the challenges faced by optical recognition algorithms. Furthermore, we show that image based recognition can assist the manual process of coin classification and identification by restricting the range of possible coins of interest.

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