An Italian who sold a coin app has built another one: how Buck, in a category crowded with big paid-acquisition players, used spare-change short videos to hit #2 on Italy's reference chart

Italian developer Emanuele Pio Totaro sold his first coin-identification app in 2024. The buyer later grew it to ~$300k a month. In 2026, in August, he came back with the same playbook and built Buck: snap a coin and find out what it's worth. The category already has 69 apps, two of which make over $250k a month, but all of them rely on paid ads, and nobody makes content. Buck picked Italy, which the big players overlooked, and used several TikTok accounts that "go looking for valuable coins everywhere" to earn organic reach. Within 75 days of launch, in Nov 6, it hit #2 on Italy's App Store reference free chart. Below: how it works, where the money comes from, its weak spots, and whether others can follow.

One post, "always check your change"

In 2026 Oct 11, the TikTok account @emattugc (display name Ematt) posted a video captioned with one line: "Sempre controllare le monete" (always check your coins). By 11-06 it had 145k views, 5,459 likes, and 197 shares, while the account itself had only 398 followers (TikHub, 11-06). The most-liked comment asked: "L'app si chiama Buck? Questa qui?" (Is the app called Buck? This one?), with a store screenshot attached.

Another post from 10-08 three days earlier had 149k views, and the top comment was just two words, "La descrizione" (see the bio), with 228 likes. Viewers already knew where to look. The account's bio reads: "Come with me to the craziest places in the world to find rare coins. The app I use to check coin values is called BUCK 🤫🤑".

The account has 58 videos, filmed outside Lidl supermarkets, at the Trevi Fountain, at coin-exchange machines in Portugal, and asking strangers on the street to check their change. Most get a few thousand views, and every so often one hits hundreds of thousands. On the Shipaton contest submission page, the founder wrote that in Italy an organic video with 20–300k views can bring in $1,000–3,000.

What it is

Buck: Valore Monete e Scanner, developed by Emanuele Pio Totaro, with Dutch partner Jurre (who runs a series of "collectibles apps" himself). Take a photo of a coin or banknote, and the AI identifies what it is, the year and country, and roughly what collectors would pay, then saves it to a portfolio-style collection. The catalog is grey by default and only gets coloured in as you scan items, and there's a leaderboard for comparing whose scans are worth more. Built natively in Swift / Kotlin, the interface looks far younger than competitors. It took third place for design at RevenueCat Shipaton 2026 (announced 10-20).

• iOS launched 2026-08-23, Google Play 09-01
• iOS: 2,241 ratings worldwide, of which Italy 2,101 and the Netherlands 104, averaging 4.63 (App Store, 11-06)
• Italy: Reference category Top Grossing ranks between 17–34 over 10-28 to 11-05; 11-06 at #2 on the Reference Top Free chart, #191 overall Top Free, and #11 on Reference Top Grossing.
• Android: 10k+ installs (est. ~10.8k), with about 1,000 added in the last 7 days (Google Play, 11-06)
• Founder's self-reported figures (from the Shipaton submission page): 13k in cumulative revenue, almost all from the last 28 days; monthly recurring revenue about $6,000; users have scanned 230k coins and banknotes

Why this one broke out: the same person doing it a second time, in a country where nobody makes content

He's done it before. In 2022 his grandfather died and left a box of old coins. He used ChatGPT to look up their value, then hired people on Upwork to build one of the first coin-scanning apps. Organic TikTok got it to ~$37k a month. In 2024, in May, he fell into a coma for two weeks, and when he woke up he couldn't work, so he sold the app to an app studio. Friends urged him: "Why not do it again, and do it better?" He had already validated demand, pricing, onboarding copy, and which videos drive installs.

The big players are all buying paid installs, and Italy is incidental. CoinSnap (310k ratings in the US store) and CoinIn (103k) are fighting mainly in the US and just passively picking up Italy traffic. 11-06 New Italy-store ratings over the last 7 days: Buck 88, CoinSnap 21, CoinIn 13. Buck has been live for 75 days, and its total Italy ratings are nearly catching up to CoinIn's, which has been live for three and a half years (2,101 vs 2,361). But it still ranks behind CoinSnap on the Top Grossing chart (reference: #3), so its revenue is clearly smaller (App Store Italy store, 11-06).

The subject matter is the hook. "That 2 euro coin in your pocket could be worth hundreds of euros" or "the old lira in grandma's tin" needs no product explanation; you just film the scene. The first paragraph of the store description reads: "Many Italian households still have old lire at home, and they're worth checking." The founder listed what they've filmed: pretending to be homeless outside Lidl, street interviews, sweeping loose change in supermarkets, and digging holes in the backyard to "unearth" ancient coins.

It's not one account. The founder posted on X that they'd make "at least 30 phones" this time, and that they handed a TikTok account to Claude for 4 weeks, which produced 8,792 posts and 8.1M views. Only @emattugc can be confirmed publicly; how many accounts there are in total is unclear (inferred: a matrix). There are also hits in the Netherlands, such as a Dutch-language "POV: the waiter finds you a fortune". Their stated next step is to "scale with UGC, photo carousels and a network of clipping accounts", targeting the US first.

Two more things: the store titles use local search terms directly (Italian "Valore Monete e Scanner", Dutch "Muntherkenning & Waarde"), covering 44 languages; there's a claim that they run Apple Search Ads in 25 EU countries, unverified. We found no Meta ads for it.

Where the money comes from: you pay after one test coin

Opening the app starts a long story-style onboarding that says "you may have already spent a valuable coin as small change", then has you scan an official test coin, and the result is blurred and a paywall appears. Prices (App Store Italy reviews, late September): weekly subscription about €4.99, annual €33.99, lifetime €67; no free trial, and closing the paywall triggers a 50%-off annual countdown.

Negative reviews are almost all about this flow, and the wording is blunt:

"Accorciate l'intro che mi viene da piangere, neanche il tutorial dell'app della banca o il prologo di GTA V è così lungo" (Shorten the intro, it's making me want to cry. Even a bank app tutorial or the GTA V prologue isn't this long.)10-15

"prima chiedono una recensione per completare il tutorial, poi … richiedono PER FORZA un abbonamento" (First they ask for a review to finish the tutorial, then they FORCE a subscription.)10-18

"Idea buona ma neanche una prova gratuita, è subito a pagamento" (Good idea, but not even a free trial, straight to paying.)10-23

Some people really did make money: 9-16 post 5 stars "Ho fatto 430€", about a coin they thought was worth 2 euros that sold on eBay for 730 euros. The founder says a girl scanned a coin worth around $19.6k, and that even with a hard paywall, many people came back weeks later with enough coins to subscribe.

Take the ratings with a grain of salt: the onboarding requires a review, so the average is 4.63, but recent reviews are mostly 1 stars; on Android, 1,901 ratings against about 10.8k installs, nearly 18%, where a typical app gets 1–3%. Inferring downloads from rating counts will overestimate. This tactic also breaks Apple's rules, and if they get enforced, both ratings and ranking could drop together.

Who it's competing with

(App Store ratings per country store, 11-06; category figures from Appaloma's 2026-08 coin-identification category research)

The recognition and valuation itself is essentially the same as CoinSnap: photo + AI + price database. Buck's only real differences are two things: making content with native-language personas, and going after a local market the big players ignore. Good design is a bonus, but users come in because they saw a "find valuable coins" video, not because they heard it recognizes coins better. That edge has no moat: anyone can use the video format, and if CoinSnap ramps up ads in Italy, Buck will struggle to hold ground.

How many people know about it

A small circle. Revenue is only self-reported on the hackathon submission page, and the numbers aren't large; they won third place in a design award, not the overall prize; the founder and co-founder each have about 4,200 followers on X. We found no media or major accounts writing about it, and no obvious copycats either: coin apps newly launched in the Italian store in the past two months are all zero-rating generic reskins. Coin identification is a category every competitor knows, and it's crowded; "change the country, make content in the local language" is a path few people know about yet.

If it were you

One-line verdict: worth trying, but don't build "another coin app". Build "a recognition category the big players only buy ads for + a language market nobody is making content for + a self-run persona account".

Who it suits: 1–3 people, with at least one native speaker of the target market willing to go out and film every day, with thick enough skin (the kind who'll pose as a homeless person outside Lidl); another person who can connect photo recognition, price data and the subscription flow. Those who can edit or hire clipping accounts have an edge.

Who it doesn't suit: those who want to go head-to-head with CoinSnap and CoinIn in the US; those who plan to rely only on store search or paid ads (30 newcomers have already tried this, 7% of growth combined); those unwilling to appear on camera or unable to find someone who will; those who can't stomach a flood of "scammer" reviews.

How to do it: pick the market before the features. Check three things: whether coin and old-banknote nostalgia has local traction (Italy had the lira, Germany the mark, France the franc; Poland, Turkey and Japan are also worth checking first); whether coin apps in the local store rely entirely on paid ads with no native-language video; and how hard the reference bestseller charts are to crack (inferred, not checked country by country). Model the product on Buck's skeleton: story-style onboarding, test coins, a collection and album with coloring. For the paywall, you can copy its hard wall and dismissal discount, but give one or two real scans first, since its biggest complaint is "couldn't test it even once". Don't copy the forced review in onboarding; that's betting Apple won't check.

How to get users: run 3–5 persona accounts of "people who find valuable coins", with a bio line like "the app I use is XX", always filmed in real places: supermarket checkouts, fountains, flea markets, change machines, grandma's drawer. One or two posts per account per day, and don't judge by single posts; look for comments asking "what's this app called?". Use local search terms directly in store titles.

When you're too late: Buck has already charted in Germany and Switzerland, and has stated its next step is the US and a network of clipping accounts. Neighboring markets like German and French, if not entered within 3 months, will most likely be taken by it or by content-driven peers like HeriBase.

Signs you've misread it: ① your accounts post for 60 days straight with no post passing 100k views and no one in the comments asking the app's name, meaning the theme doesn't work in your market; ② Buck drops out of the top 50 on Italy's reference bestseller chart, or the founder stops publishing revenue updates, suggesting a $1,000–3,000 per-video conversion can't hold up; ③ CoinSnap or CoinIn start hiring local creators in your market to film "coin finding", meaning the big players have filled the content gap and the small team's window is closing; ④ Apple starts enforcing against apps that force reviews during onboarding, and your conversion depends on it.

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Data and sources: App Store ratings, charts and reviews by country store (2026-10-28 to 11-06); Google Play installs and ratings (11-06); TikTok account @emattugc videos and comments (11-06 scraped); Buck's Shipaton submission page on Devpost (founder's own account and self-reported revenue); RevenueCat Shipaton announcement; Appaloma coin-identification category research (2026-08); Onbo Hub's onboarding teardown; founder's X posts. Anything marked "inferred" or "est." is an inference; revenue is self-reported by the founder only, and Apple Search Ads spending is unverified.