Yes, it's true: The
American Numismatic Society uses a mobile phone to photograph coins that they sell on their merchant's storefront.
The story was told in an
ANS article published in their 'pocket change' online blog (
here) and retold in the Numismatic Bibliomania Society in their weekly blog (
here). Not what I was expecting, but it makes sense. The whole process is kept, ideally, to five minutes
per coin. It's all very economical. Personally, I shoot a dozen coins and their tags over something like half an hour, and try to keep processing time down to two minutes
per coin, not including the batch process to import the photos and merge multiple exposures in high dynamic range (HDR).
I like that they transfer files wirelessly to their PC for photoprocessing and use a neutral gradient background on the finished product.