This paper gives an overview on the recently granted EU project COINS which stands for COmbatting Illicit Numismatic Sales. The proposed project aims to substantially contribute to the fight against illegal trade and theft of coins which appears to be a major part of the illegal antiques market. Central component in the permanent identification and traceability of coins is the underlying recognition 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 project, the recognition of coins will be based on new algorithms of pattern recognition and image processing, in a field – classification and identification of ancient coins – as yet unexplored. Since the project has started recently we present first results based on state of the art methods, main project goals and work already performed in the field of coin recognition.

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