Hobo nickels

[agnut]

Thought y’all might like to take a break from tweedle dee and tweedle dumb day.

Pop up the website for photos of 37 hobo nickels

http://www.buzzfeed.com/fjelstud/38-most-impressive-hobo-nickels

Also you can Google for more examples. Quite a story behind their creation.

Best wishes,

agnut

[madfranks]

Some of those are kind of crude, but others are works of art. I like the skeleton one:

http://s3-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2011/9/13/17/enhanced-buzz-25089-1315948626-20.jpg

[Neuro]

Some of those are kind of crude, but others are works of art. I like the skeleton one:

http://s3-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2011/9/13/17/enhanced-buzz-25089-1315948626-20.jpg
That is truly amazing!

[osoab]

We had this thread a while back. Unfortunately all the pics were lost.

Hobo Nickels (http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?35696-Hobo-Nickels&highlight=Hobo+nickels)

[gunDriller]

I remember Silver Art as being into this form of sculpture.

Nickel is an interesting material to work with. Of course an American nickel is cupro-nickel, while a Canadian nickel is pure nickel. Got one sitting right here on my desktop. I love Canadian nickels.

I used to have a machinist that reported to me, where we had a mutual task of machining a high-nickel content steel that was used for its superb magnetic properties (basically making the best electro-magnets possible). We were mounting tiny thin-film circuits on the high-nickel steel, so the machinist had the difficult task of drilling & tapping 0-80 screw holes in the material. As his co-worker and technically his supervisor, I was the shoulder he got to cry on. It is very common with this sort of material to get 99% done, and then to break a tap during a final operation, because the material is so 'gummy' and doesn't take kindly to machining.

I personally have no desire to work with it myself, but I sure admire those who do work with it.

What shaping tools do they use for the Hobo Nickels ? Dremel followed by maybe some handheld burnishing tools ?

[Neuro]

What shaping tools do they use for the Hobo Nickels ? Dremel followed by maybe some handheld burnishing tools ?
According to this page http://www.angelfire.com/folk/famoustramp/nickel.html hobo's only used a knife to carve the nickel with.

[1970 silver art]

I remember Silver Art as being into this form of sculpture.




I am still into this form of artwork but I am only a collector of hobo nickels, however, I do not and have never created any hobo nickels and I do not have plans to do so. I just collect the hobo nickels that someone else created and that I like. Collecting hobo nickels is my second coin/PM-related hobby behind collecting certain rare silver art bars from the '70's. With that said, I have not bought any hobo nickels this year since I have been concentrating my time and FRN's to finding and buying certain silver art bars to add to my collection. It was Heimdal that introduced me to hobo nickels during a Sunday night chat session sometime in the second half of 2010. They are fun to collect IMO and I like collecting them for the same reason that I like collecting silver art bars.

[1970 silver art]

We had this thread a while back. Unfortunately all the pics were lost.

Hobo Nickels (http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?35696-Hobo-Nickels&highlight=Hobo+nickels)



Here are some pictures of the ones that I had in that thread:

This is the first hobo nickel that I bought in September 2010 from a LCS:

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/1stHoboNickelFront.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/1stHoboNickelBack.jpg


Here are some others that I like:

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/Newspaperclown.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/Newspaperclownback.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/Femaleplayer.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/Femaleplayerback.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/Maleplayerfront.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/Maleplayerback.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/HarleyHoboFront.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/HarleyHoboBack.jpg

[1970 silver art]

Even though I do not have any pets, this following hobo nickel is my favorite one out of the ones that I currently have in my collection:

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/DOGnickel.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/DOGnickelpart2.jpg

[1970 silver art]

Here are a few other hobo nickels that I have in my collection:

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/Coinshowhobofront1.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/ChineseSoldierFront.jpg



http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/ProfessFront.jpg

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx54/COScollect/ShowMeFront.jpg

[1970 silver art]

As I have mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, I did not buy any hobo nickels in a long while because I have been busy collecting '70's silver art bars. I think that the last time that I bought a hobo nickel was sometime late last year. Hobo nickels can be a very expensive hobby and there are some that can cost into the $1000's of dollars and sometimes over $10,000. The "Bo" (George Washington "Bo" Hughes and "Bert" (Bert Weigand) hobo nickels are the most valuable ones that were ever created from what little I know about them. The following links are examples of certain ones that went for large $ amounts:

http://www.coinworld.com/articles/hobo-nickel-brings-13-750/

http://www.coinworld.com/articles/hobo-nickels-sell-for-170-000/

I do not have any "original" Hobo Nickels. All of the ones that I have were done by artists that many people do not know about. Generally speaking, hobo nickels are hard to find at the LCS and at coin shows. I am basing this on my coin show experience of trying to find one. Every once in a while, I might find one that I like but this year is different since I have not been concentrating very hard on looking for them.

I am not currently a member but there is also a club for hobo nickel collectors and it is interesting for people who might be interested in this hobby. The following link is this club's website:

http://www.hobonickels.org/


I will eventually resume looking for and buying hobo nickels to add to my collection but I have not decided when I will do that. Probably not anytime soon since my silver art bar addiction has a very strong hold on me (and my FRN's) for the time being.

[madfranks]

Wow, silver art, you have more hobo nickels than I thought you did! I have only a couple, one is a pizza man, the other a revolutionary soldier. Both cost around $30, and while they're not the highest quality hobo nickels out there, they are pretty cool.

[1970 silver art]

Wow, silver art, you have more hobo nickels than I thought you did! I have only a couple, one is a pizza man, the other a revolutionary soldier. Both cost around $30, and while they're not the highest quality hobo nickels out there, they are pretty cool.

I actually have more hobo nickels than the ones that I posted on this thread but I never got around to taking pictures of all of them. If/when I get the time, then I will take pictures of the rest of hobo nickels in my collection.

[Silver Rocket Bitches!]

Some of them are quite impressive:

4074