In November 2020, Stack’s Bowers Galleries announced that
they had acquired the patent-pending technology, Coins in Motion, along with
the services of its creator, Larry Stendebach. What drove Larry to create this
technology, and what problem was Larry trying to solve? We sat down with Larry
to get his side of the story:
“The technology for Coins in Motion was spawned by a desire
to show coins from my personal collection in a way that photographs and quick
cellphone videos could not. I wanted a way to create high resolution
representations of the coins that accurately showed the luster and surfaces as
if one had the coin in hand. It was a desire that led me down a four-year
rabbit hole of development. After much trial and error, I was finally able to
build the electronics, model the 3D parts and assemble the mechanisms used
today to create the patent-pending Coins in Motion animation process we use
here at Stack’s Bowers Galleries.
“During my years of tinkering and development,
the coin market underwent a major shift in buying habits, with most sales now
occurring in the online marketplace. Such a major shift meant it was time for
the industry to move on from the use of static images when selling top-tier
coins. Photographs cannot accurately capture the luster of a coin and are prone
to conceal details that might otherwise be visible in hand. Coins in Motion
seeks to provide the perfect solution to accurately animate how coins look when
they are actually held by a viewer. Ultra-high-resolution animations depict how
luster moves over a coin’s surfaces, while the rotating motion allows for any
possible imperfections to be revealed.”
