Wednesday, April 11, 2012
-hobo nickels-
The sudden scarcity of jobs in the early 1930s forced a huge number of men to hit the road. Certainly some coins were carved to fill the idle hours. More importantly, a ‘knight of the road,’ with no regular source of income, could take one of these plentiful coins and turn it into a folk art piece, which could in turn be sold or traded for small favors such as a meal or shelter for a night.
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22 comments:
Absolutely brilliant Max, treasure that heritage mate . . . love the way the "Liberty" was mostly left untouched.
Really cool!
Holy fuck! "Really Cool" doesn't even come close! This may be the coolest shit I've ever seen. Max, have u made any of these? Seems like good way to pass the time. I've seen rings out of quarters, but nothing like that buffalo nickel with the Indian skull. Whoa.
...never have. i'd like to give it a whirl, if i ever have the time. inspiring to say the least.
hey max do you have any idea how those dudes made those? sometimes i'm on the bum and it'd be nice to have something to show for it.
supposedly most were just made with a knife.... cause that is all they carried. must of needed sharpened quite often.
that kind of talent should be worth so much...things have always been twisted...
You're right...it is fucking rad...and you have A knife!! ha!
Coolest thing I've read/seen today, Max...thanks for that!
i'd seen a picture of that Indian skull nickel before but had no idea what it was till now, so rad.
Are they pure silver?
My father had a huge collection on silver dollars , but this is the first time i have seen somthing like this . This is amazing
Super sick! If I'm not mistaken the second image is either contemporary or heavily inspired a maker who goes by the name Tony Bones. I first saw them on the Needles & Pens website www.needlesandpens.com (a shop located in SF)
He also has a few pieces on his Etsy shop.
www.etsy.com/shop/tonybones
As always thanks for another rad post.
thanks faythe.
and some info:
All buffalo nickels were struck in the same alloy of 75% copper / 25% nickel that has been used for all 5-cent pieces except the famous "war nickels" made during WW 2. The latter were made of silver, copper, and manganese because nickel was a strategic war metal.
The term "nickel" was applied to the coin long before the buffalo design was adopted.
Cooler than the other side of the pillow. Thanks for sharing.
Hope all is going well for you Max.
Anthony
amazing
Damn works been scarce for me like a mofo..i be a nickle makin sun of a bitch back then ...bucket full...good story..imma go bust out some nickels...
Funny, I just was looking at shit on eBay and came across that second one. That Indian skull is cool as hell. I'm gonna try my hand at carving some nickels.
Thanks for the reply Max. I really dig the information on the metals.
That is truly unbelievably cool. Even the bums suck now.
amazing post!!!
I watched a video on you tube about how to carve hobo nickels a few weeks ago. I don't have the link, but there are million videos on there. I suppose that a magnifying glass would be the first thing that I'd need to get started.
Really cool.
Really cool.
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