FAQ

The AI grades from photos only. Obverse is required; reverse is optional but strongly recommended for accuracy. No text context — no coin name, no description, no notes, no filename — is fed to the model. Identification and grade are derived entirely from what the camera captured.

This is a change from earlier versions. Previously the model received a coin-name hint along with the photos, which made it easy to bias the grade by typing a more (or less) optimistic identification. Now the same images will produce the same identification every time — and the same grade most of the time.

We also pin the AI's sampling temperature low (≈ 0.1), which cuts out most of the run-to-run randomness that even identical inputs used to produce. Expect occasional small variation on borderline grades; expect zero variation on identification.

What the AI returns

• An identification line (year, mint mark, series, denomination) — derived from the photo, prominent in the result card.
• A numeric grade (e.g. MS-63) and grade name (“Choice Uncirculated”).
• A confidence score 0–100, plus a plausible grade range (e.g. MS-62 to MS-64).
• Five sub-grades: strike, luster, surface, eye appeal, and rim — each 0–100.
• Modifier flags: + designation, ★, Proof-Like, Deep Mirror PL, Details (problem grade) with a reason.
• A brief variety attribution (only when the model is reasonably sure).
• Three short observations, a 2–3 sentence narrative, and a certification recommendation.
• Price references (Greysheet bid, CDN retail, recent eBay range) are not yet available — Mintward isn't connected to a price data source, so the result card labels these “Not yet available” rather than showing an invented number.

When the AI's identification disagrees with yours

If the AI identifies the coin differently from the name you typed (e.g. you wrote “1881 Morgan”, AI says “1881-S Morgan Dollar”), you'll be asked which name to save under before the coin is added to inventory. You can always change it later on the coin's edit page.

No-photo coins

Coins without photos cannot be AI-graded. Bulk regrade jobs will skip them and report the count; add a photo first if you want them graded.

Regrading a coin you've sold

You can still regrade coins after they're sold — Mintward will warn you first, since regrading uses a grade credit either way.

No — anything you typed stays put. A regrade fills in what's blank and updates the grade itself, but a variety you wrote off the flip, a “Details” reason you set, a copper colour you recorded — those are your calls, and the AI won't overwrite them. Regrade the coin a dozen times and your entries survive all dozen.

That's the whole rule, and it cuts both ways: a field you've filled in is yours, and an empty field is an open invitation. So if you do want the AI to have another go at one of them, clear it, save, and re-run the grade — the next result will fill it in. Blank means the AI may answer; filled means you already have.

What the AI always sets

The grade and its name, the confidence score, the plausible grade range, the five sub-grades — strike, luster, surface, eye appeal, rim — and the written observations, narrative and certification recommendation. Those come back fresh every time, because that is what you spent the credit on.

One exception worth knowing: if the coin's grade source is anything other than AI — PCGS, NGC, Raw, dealer-graded — a regrade won't touch the grade either. A slabbed coin's grade came off the holder, and no re-run of ours should quietly talk over it. You'll still get the fresh AI opinion recorded in the coin's grading history, where you can read it and decide for yourself.

The five tick boxes — +, ★, PL, DMPL and Details — move with the grade rather than individually, because a tick box has no blank state for you to clear. So if you tick one by hand on an AI-graded coin, we treat the grade as yours from then on: the grade source becomes Manually graded and later regrades record their opinion in the coin's history without overwriting what you set. Set the grade source back to AI if you want to hand it back.

Same principle applies to identification: if the year, mint mark or series is already filled in, a regrade leaves it be and only fills the gaps.

You can try, and you'll get a result — but know what you're getting. The AI is trained primarily on US coinage graded on the Sheldon 1–70 scale. That's its comfort zone. World coins, ancients, tokens, and medals sit outside it, and accuracy drops off noticeably once you leave it.

There's a second wrinkle: the AI always answers in Sheldon numbers, and those don't always map cleanly onto how a foreign coin is actually graded in its home market. Plenty of European series still trade on descriptive grades or KM-referenced standards, so an “AU-55” from the AI may not mean much to a buyer who grades that coin a different way.

Our advice: treat an AI grade on a foreign coin as a starting point or a sanity check, not an authoritative grade. For anything with real value, trust an experienced in-person eye or a specialist service — PCGS World or NGC World — before you price or sell.

Better foreign-coin support is on our list as the model improves — watch for updates.

No. Mintward runs its grading on Azure OpenAI Service — Microsoft's hosted version of the models, not OpenAI's public API. The distinction matters: under Microsoft's Azure OpenAI privacy commitments, your inputs (coin photos, grade requests, prompt data) and the AI's outputs stay inside our Azure tenant, and Microsoft does not use any of it to train, retrain, or improve their models. If you want that from the source, Microsoft publishes its Azure OpenAI data-privacy documentation.

Your coin photos live in Azure Blob Storage under your account. At grade time the AI reads them, sends its answer back to us for display, and that's the end of it — the model gains no rights to your images and keeps no copy for learning.

One honest caveat: if you email screenshots to support@mintward.app, that arrives in our inbox as ordinary email — treat that correspondence the way you would with any support team.

As for retention: your inventory, grades, photos, and history stay in your Mintward account until you delete them — or delete the account itself from the Danger zone on your Profile, which removes everything with it. For the full picture — everything we collect, who processes it, and your rights — see our Privacy Policy.

Yes. Mintward is built to work with screen readers — VoiceOver on Mac and iPhone, NVDA and JAWS on Windows — as well as keyboard-only navigation and voice control. If you run the shop without a mouse, or with assistive tech, the day-to-day work should be reachable.

Some of what's in place: a visible focus outline that follows you as you tab, so you always know where you are; form fields with real, announced labels and required-field markers instead of grey placeholder text; a “skip to main content” link that shows on the first press of Tab so you don't have to walk the whole sidebar; pop-up dialogs that keep keyboard focus inside them, close on Esc, and hand focus back where you left off; and live announcements when something saves or errors, so a screen reader tells you a coin was saved without you hunting for confirmation.

We're working toward WCAG 2.2 AA, and it's an ongoing effort — not a box we've ticked once. If you hit a wall somewhere, email support@mintward.app with the page you were on and what you were trying to do, and we'll fix it.

Good photos are the single biggest lever on grading and identification accuracy — the AI sees only what your camera captured. A few habits go a long way.

Background. Use a solid color that contrasts with the coin. Neutral gray or black velvet works well for silver and clad — pure white blows out the luster. Use white or light gray for darker copper or bronze. Avoid busy patterns and glossy surfaces, which reflect light back into the shot.

Lighting. Keep it indirect and diffused. Direct flash kills luster and creates hot spots that hide surface detail. Best is two soft lights at angles, which brings out luster through “raking” light. A single desk lamp angled at about 30 degrees from the coin works too. Avoid warm yellow incandescent — daylight or neutral white LED gives the most accurate color. Avoid fluorescent if possible.

Framing. Fill the frame so the coin occupies 70–80% of the shot. The in-app crop tool helps with this.

Angle. Hold the camera directly above, with the lens perpendicular to the coin face. Tilted shots throw off both grading and AI identification.

Focus and steadiness. Tap to focus on phone cameras. Brace your elbows or rest the phone on something. Camera shake is invisible on the preview but ruins fine detail like luster, contact marks, and hairlines.

Both sides. Always photograph both obverse and reverse. Edge or rim shots only if relevant — for certain coins, mint marks live on the edge.

Resolution. Shoot at your camera's highest quality setting. The app compresses photos for upload, so it's better to start big and shrink than to start small and lose detail.

If you're on a paid plan (Dealer or Dealer Pro), you can invite employees to work inside your account. They sign in with their own login and see the same inventory, customers, sales, and notes you do — it's your shop, shared. Anything a staff member adds lives in your account, not theirs.

Their work is attributed to them. When a staff member grades a coin or rings up a sale, it's stamped “Added by [their name]”, so you can always see who did what.

How many seats you get

• Free — no staff accounts; it's a solo account.
• Dealer — up to 3 staff accounts.
• Dealer Pro — unlimited staff accounts.

A pending invitation counts against your seats until it's accepted or revoked.

What staff can and can't do

Staff have full run of the day-to-day — grading, inventory, customers, and point of sale. What they can't touch is the business side: they can't manage the subscription, delete the account, or invite other people. Those controls are yours alone, and staff never see the billing or danger sections of the profile.

They do manage their own security: each staff member sets up their own multi-factor authentication, independent of yours, and can leave the team on their own if they move on.

Inviting someone

Go to Profile, find the Team members card, and hit Invite member. Enter their email (a name is optional) and they'll get a link to set up their own login.

Removing someone

Remove a staff member and their login is deleted, but nothing they added leaves with them — the coins they graded and the sales they rang up stay right where they are in your account. You lose the person, not the work.

Bring it. Import CSV on your Inventory page takes a spreadsheet from whatever you keep your books in today, walks you through seven short steps, and builds the coins in the background while you carry on working.

We ship presets for PCGS Set Registry, NGC Registry, CoinManage, and Numista — pick yours and the column mapping fills itself in. Came from somewhere else? Excel, Sheets, a point-of-sale export, a file you built yourself over fifteen years? Choose the generic preset and point each column at the right field from a dropdown. Nothing here is tied to a particular vendor, and you never have to reshape your file to suit ours.

What columns you need

Exactly one: a name for each coin. Everything else is optional, and you map only what your file actually has — year, mint mark, series, cert number, grade, grade source, variety, cost basis, ask price, status, photo columns, and an external ID. Rows with no name are skipped and listed in the error report, so nothing disappears quietly.

Photos come too

• None — bring the coins in now, add photos later.
• URLs in the CSV — map a column of image links and we fetch each one as the coin is created.
• A ZIP of photos — upload the archive alongside the CSV and map a filename column; we match by filename, folders and all.

Obverse and reverse are separate mappings either way, and a photo that won't load doesn't sink the coin — the coin lands, and the failure shows up in the error report for you to fix at your leisure.

Grading on the way in

Tick auto-grade and the AI grades each imported coin that arrived with a photo. That spends one grade per coin, so the wizard shows your balance before you commit — and if you run out part-way, the rest are skipped cleanly rather than half-graded. No photo, no grade, no quota spent.

How the job runs

Start the import and you're back on your inventory with a progress banner — the work happens in the background, so leave the page, ring up a sale, close the laptop. One import runs at a time per account, you can cancel mid-flight and keep the coins already created, and when it finishes you can download a report listing every skipped row and why. Files cap at 20 MB for the CSV and 100 MB for the photo ZIP; past that, split it into batches.

A few conversions worth knowing up front: a cost or ask price that isn't a number stops that row rather than quietly recording it as $0; a blank one becomes $0. A status we don't recognise comes in as In stock. And if you didn't map year, mint mark, or series, we'll read them off the coin's name where we can.

Your data is yours. Take a copy whenever you like. Press Export CSV on your Inventory page — it sits right next to Import CSV — and your browser downloads mintward-inventory-plus today's date. No request, no waiting period, no support ticket. On a big inventory the button reads “Exporting…” for a few seconds while we assemble the file.

You get every coin in the account, one per row, oldest first. Not the page you happen to be looking at, not the search you've typed — the whole book, every time.

What's in each row

• Identification — name, year, mint mark, series, variety, cert number.
• Grade — the grade and its name, where it came from (PCGS, NGC, Raw, AI), and the sort rank we use to order grades properly.
• Designations — plus, star, Proof-Like, Deep Mirror, and Details with its reason, each written yes or no.
• AI detail — confidence, the plausible grade range, and the five sub-grades (strike, luster, surface, eye appeal, rim).
• The business columns — status and its display name, cost basis, ask price, and the price-reference fields.
• Photo links, your external ID, and both timestamps in UTC.
• Added by — the staff member who added the coin, blank when that was you. Same byline you see on the coin's own page.

The one thing we hold back is the long-form AI writing — the narrative, the observations, the certification recommendation. Those are paragraphs, and paragraphs turn a spreadsheet into a wall. They're on each coin's page, and they travel in full in the account export described in the next question.

Who can run it, and when

Anyone signed in to the account, owner or staff. Staff already see every one of these columns on screen, so there'd be no sense stopping them putting the same data in a spreadsheet.

It also works when your account is read-only or locked after a lapsed subscription. That's deliberate: whether you're paying us this month has nothing to do with whether you can hold your own inventory in your hands.

Two files, two jobs. One is the spreadsheet you actually work from; the other is a complete copy of everything in your account. Both are one click, and you never have to ask us for either.

Inventory export — the working file

Export CSV on your Inventory page. Coins only, one row each, opens straight into Excel or Sheets. This is the one you want for a stock list, an insurance schedule, a consignment sheet, a show inventory, or your accountant. Owner or staff can run it.

Export my data — everything, in one file

Export my data in the Danger zone on your Profile. It's a JSON file, and it carries far more than coins: your profile and plan details, every coin with all its AI writing intact, your customers, your sales down to the line items, your full grading history, your grade packs, and your regrade jobs. If you ever want to move your business somewhere else, or just keep your own copy of the lot, this is the file — the complete picture, handed over without a conversation.

Because it's the whole business in one download, it's owner-only. Staff can export the inventory; the account bundle stays with you. Passwords and security tokens are never included — they'd be no use to you and a liability in a file.

One thing to plan for: photos

Neither file contains your photographs. Both carry links to them; the images themselves live in your Mintward account. So if the originals matter to you — and for good shots of good coins they usually do — keep them wherever you took them, the same as you would any other working file.

Both exports work whatever your subscription is doing: active, past due, cancelled, or locked.

Yes to both. The export is standard RFC 4180 CSV, written the way Excel writes it, and it opens on a double-click in Excel, Numbers, Sheets, or anything else that reads a spreadsheet. A few of the choices inside it are worth knowing about, because they're doing real work.

Accents and foreign names survive

There's an invisible byte-order mark at the front of the file. That's what keeps “Königreich” from arriving as “Königreich” in Excel on Windows. Feeding the file to your own script instead? Read it as UTF-8 and allow for that mark.

The apostrophe you might spot

Spreadsheets run any cell that starts with =, +, -, or @ as a formula — a genuine way people get attacked through shared spreadsheets. So text cells starting with one of those get a leading apostrophe, which Excel and Sheets read as “this is text” and don't display. You'll only ever see it if you open the raw file in a text editor. Prices and dates are written by us rather than typed by you, so they skip it entirely and negative costs stay negative.

Dates, blanks, and yes/no

Timestamps are UTC, written YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, and the columns are named _utc so the zone is stated rather than guessed at. On the West Coast, a coin added at 6pm shows as the following day. Empty cells are genuinely empty rather than the word “null”, and true/false columns read yes and no.

Editing it and bringing it back

Go ahead — fix a hundred cost-basis cells in Excel, then run the file back through Import CSV. The importer writes the fields a dealer maintains: name, year, mint mark, series, cert number, grade, grade source, variety, cost, ask, status, photos. The AI's own output — confidence, sub-grades, grade rank — plus who added the coin and when are ours to set, so they stay as they were rather than being overwritten by a stale copy.

One thing to set up: an import creates coins, so map the export's id column as your external ID and a second run will recognise what's already in your inventory instead of duplicating it.

We keep email to a minimum — you'll only hear from us when there's something worth sending. When you sign up, the first thing you'll get is a short welcome email pointing you at your first few steps: add a coin, run a Quick Grade, and — if you're on a paid plan — invite your staff.

That welcome email also includes a link to confirm your address. You don't have to click it to start using Mintward — nothing is locked behind it. Confirming just makes sure we can actually reach you for the things that matter later: sign-in security codes, password resets, and sale receipts. If we can't reach your inbox, those all fall over quietly, so it's worth the ten seconds.

The emails we send

• Welcome & confirmation — once, right after you sign up.
• Sign-in security codes — only if you turn on two-step verification from your Profile.
• Staff invitations — the link an employee clicks to join your shop.
• Email-change confirmations — sent to the new address when you change your sign-in email, so nobody can move your login without access to the new inbox.

If an email doesn't show up

Check your spam or promotions folder first, then add support@mintward.app to your contacts — everything we send comes from that address. Still nothing? Email us and we'll sort it out.

Whenever you set a password — signing up, resetting a forgotten one, changing it from your Profile, or joining a shop from a staff invitation — it needs all four of these:

• At least 8 characters
• At least one uppercase letter
• At least one lowercase letter
• At least one symbol — anything that isn't a letter or a number, so ! @ # $ and a plain space all count

A digit isn't required. Length does more for you than a token “1” on the end, and we'd rather you spent the effort on a longer password than on remembering where you put the number.

The form checks each rule as you type and ticks them off, so you never have to submit to find out what was missing.

If your current password doesn't meet these

Nothing happens. We're not locking you out of your own account or forcing a reset over a rule we added after you signed up — your existing password keeps working for as long as you want to keep it. The requirements apply the next time you set one. If you do change it, the new one has to meet all four.

We never see the password itself: it's hashed with bcrypt before it's stored, which is a one-way trip. That's also why we can only ever offer you a reset link and never the old password back — not policy, we genuinely don't have it.

Every time the AI successfully grades a coin, that's one grade off your balance. A grade that fails — say the photos can't be read — doesn't count, and coins with no photo are skipped entirely, so they never touch your quota.

What each plan includes

• Free — 50 grades total, for the life of the account. Not 50 a month — 50, full stop. When they're gone you can buy a grade pack or move up to a paid plan.
• Dealer — no grades bundled in. You grade as you go by buying packs, which is the cheaper path if you grade in bursts rather than steadily.
• Dealer Pro — 200 grades a month, reset on your billing anniversary (the day of the month you subscribed, not the first of the calendar month). Unused grades don't roll over.

How packs fit in

Grade packs stack on top of whatever your plan gives you. We always spend your plan's allotment first and only draw from packs once that bucket is empty — so you never burn a pack you paid for while free grades are still sitting there.

Your current balance — plan grades left, plus any pack credits — is always on your Profile.

There are two paid plans, both billed monthly through Square: Dealer at $100 a month and Dealer Pro at $200 a month. Square charges the card you registered with them on the anniversary of the day you subscribed — not the first of the calendar month — and keeps charging monthly until you cancel.

Where your card lives

On Square's side, never ours. Adding or updating a card happens on Square's hosted pages, and Mintward never sees or stores your card number. If you need to swap the card on file, do it through Square.

If a payment fails

Square retries, and Mintward flags the account past due on your Profile. You keep working normally while that plays out — nothing pauses the moment a charge bounces. If the payment never recovers and Square cancels the subscription, you land in the same 90-day read-only window as a cancellation (next question): your data stays intact and exportable, but adding coins, grading, and ringing up sales pause until billing is sorted out. We're working on more graceful handling of failed payments — watch for updates.

Changing plans

Upgrading from Dealer to Dealer Pro takes effect immediately, and Square prorates the difference for the rest of the month. Downgrading isn't supported inside Mintward today — you'd cancel your current plan, keep full access to the end of the billing period, and re-subscribe at the lower tier from there.

Cancelling

From Profile → Subscription → Cancel. You keep full access through the end of the period you've already paid for; there's no refund for the remainder of that month.

Packs aren't part of this

Grade packs are one-time purchases, not a subscription. They never renew, they're never billed monthly, and unused credits carry forward indefinitely.

Your paper trail

Square emails a receipt from receipts@square.com for every charge — that's your record for the books. Inside Mintward, the Subscription panel on your Profile shows the plan you're on, its current status, and any grade packs you've bought. Full payment history lives on Square's dashboard; an in-app view is on our roadmap.

Cancelling is a soft landing, not a cliff. When you cancel, your plan stays active until the end of the period you've already paid for — you don't lose anything mid-month, and you're not billed again.

After your plan ends

Your account drops into a 90-day read-only window. Everything's still there — inventory, customers, sales, grading history — and you can look at all of it and export it, but you can't add or edit coins, run grades, ring up sales, or manage staff. It's a safety net so nothing disappears the moment a card lapses.

If you don't resubscribe within those 90 days, the account locks. Your data isn't deleted — only deleting your account from the Danger zone on your Profile does that — but you'll need an active plan to get back in and working.

What you keep

Any grade pack credits you've bought survive cancellation and are waiting for you if you come back. Resubscribe any time and you pick up right where you left off.

No. Grade packs don't expire — buy them whenever they're a good deal and use them whenever you need them.

Packs stack on top of whatever your plan already gives you, and we always spend your plan's grades first. Only once that bucket is empty do we start drawing from your packs, so a pack never gets burned while you've still got plan grades to use.

They also travel with your account through any plan change. Move from Dealer Pro down to Dealer, or cancel and come back later, and your pack credits are still sitting there. You can see the balance on your Profile.