The invention relates to a method and device for recognizing a coin by using the embossed pattern characteristics thereof. For this purpose, the inventive method comprises in spreading the characteristics of the picture, in reducing said characteristics by reducing said picture and in transforming it by polar transformation, in comparing the transformed picture with a plurality of reference patterns according to a first simplified criterion, in creating a list of the reference patterns, in sorting them according to the similarity thereof with the transformed picture and in comparing the transformed picture with the reference patterns contained in the list according to the sorting thereof upon a second exact criterion.