The Problem & The Solution

The Arrowhead Market Has a Trust Problem

Fake artifacts flood online marketplaces. "COA" has become meaningless. Traditional authentication takes weeks and costs a fortune. The system is broken—and collectors on both sides lose.

ArtifactVerify exists to fix it.

The Trust Crisis in Artifact Collecting

Trust has broken down at every level of the arrowhead market. Here's what's happening:

Buyer vs. Seller Distrust

Buyers can't verify seller claims
Sellers can't prove authenticity without expensive, slow COAs
Anonymous online transactions create fertile ground for fraud
Returns and disputes hurt both parties

The COA Problem

"Certificate of Authenticity" means nothing without standards
Authenticator reputations vary widely, and newcomers face a steep learning curve understanding whose opinions the community trusts
Fully verifying who issued a COA is a manual and lengthy process
COA quality varies widely, and buyers have no easy way to verify the process behind one

Uneven Playing Field

Knowledgeable flippers profit from uninformed buyers
Honest sellers struggle to differentiate from scammers
New collectors get burned and leave the hobby
Quality reproductions are nearly indistinguishable to novices

System Friction

Traditional authentication takes weeks via mail
Risk of damage or loss during shipping
Costs $35-75+ per piece—prohibitive for most transactions
Not practical for $20-50 marketplace purchases

C.O.A.'s Many Definitions

Certificate of Authenticity—three words that should carry weight. In theory, a COA should represent a universally trusted expert's professional opinion that an artifact is genuine, backed by reputation, methodology, and expertise.

In practice? The term has been stretched to meaninglessness:

The Ubiquitous or the "Trust Me" COA

A seller-printed card with no verifiable credentials, methodology, standards, accountability.

The "Inherited Collection" COA

Often legitimate, sometimes fabricated. No easy way to verify the original collector or their sourcing. Reproductions can be packaged in with "estate sales."

The Expert COA

Issued by recognized authenticators with decades of experience, published works, and professional accountability. But in totality costs $35-75+, takes weeks, and still varies by examiner.

What COA Should Mean

A verifiable, tamper-proof assessment with clear methodology, calibrated confidence levels, and shareable documentation that travels with the artifact.

Everyone Loses in the Current System

Buyers often can't distinguish legitimate COAs from worthless ones
Honest sellers struggle to prove their pieces are different from scammers'
Legitimate experts get their profession undermined by the noise
The hobby loses new collectors who get burned and never return

How PointCheck with AI Addresses These Issues

Modern AI has reached a level of visual analysis capability that makes real-time, high-quality artifact assessment possible.

Cutting-Edge Vision AI

ArtifactVerify uses cutting-edge multimodal AI—a leading frontier model for visual analysis—specifically because of its exceptional performance in fine-grained visual analysis tasks:

Best-in-class image understanding—excels at identifying subtle visual patterns, textures, and morphological features
Detailed reasoning—explains what it observes and why, not just a yes/no verdict
Calibrated uncertainty—acknowledges when evidence is ambiguous rather than overconfident guessing

Purpose-Built Prompts + Calibration

Raw AI output isn't enough though - we've built a complete system:

Lithic-specialized prompts—trained to identify side-notched, corner-notched, stemmed, and lanceolate morphologies; detect knapping signatures vs. machine grinding
Evidence-based verification—cross-checks AI assessments against detected evidence patterns to catch potential false positives and flag conflicting signals. If the model is unsure- an in-person expert assessment is recommended.
SHA-256 image binding—cryptographically locks the assessment to the exact images submitted, preventing image swapping
A dedicated page displaying your artifact's assessment-with PointCheck Full Analysis, you get a custom web page with your original submission along with the results so buyers can see the results for themselves.

The Reality of Most Purchases

You found a nice point online. The seller wants $40. You're on the fence and you only have a day or two before someone else buys it. Sound familiar?

Traditional Authentication

Ship the artifact, wait 2-4 weeks, pay $35-75+. Great for museum-quality pieces. But for a $40 Facebook Marketplace find? The math doesn't work.

By the time you'd get an answer, the piece is long gone—bought by someone else or the deal has moved on.

What You Actually Need

A quick sanity check before you commit. Not a guarantee—just enough information to make a more informed decision while the opportunity is still there.

That's what ArtifactVerify provides: fast, affordable analysis that meets the timeline and budget of modern collecting.

How ArtifactVerify Addresses The Problems

Instant Results

Upload photos, get assessment in minutes. No shipping, no waiting, no risk of damage in transit.

Level Playing Field

Neither buyer nor seller controls the result. Algorithmic objectivity that both sides can trust.

Calibrated Probabilities

Not binary yes/no—calibrated percentages that reflect real-world likelihood, with honest 'Inconclusive' when warranted.

Tamper-Proof Verification

SHA-256 hashing binds assessment to exact images. If someone swaps photos, verification fails.

Shareable Documentation

Public verification pages and QR codes that travel with your artifact—digital proof accessible anywhere, anytime.

Transparent Methodology

See exactly what the AI observed and why. Evidence-based reasoning, not 'because I said so.'

Ready to Experience Modern Authentication?

ArtifactVerify resets the playing field. Equal access to professional-grade analysis for every collector, every transaction.

Quick Check ($2)Full Analysis ($15)

Are you a professional authenticator?

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