  A simple computer-based algorithm has been developed to identify pre-modern
coins minted from the same dies, intending mainly coins minted by hand-made
dies designed to be applicable to images taken from auction websites or
catalogs. Though the method is not intended to perform a complete automatic
classification, which would require more complex and intensive algorithms
accessible to experts of computer vision its simplicity of use and lack of
specific requirement about the quality of pictures can provide help and
complementary information to the visual inspection, adding quantitative
measurements of the "distance" between pairs of different coins. The distance
metric is based on a number of pre-defined reference points that mark key
features of the coin to identify the set of coins they have been minted from.
