These coins apparently originated for two purposes: to use idle time and to earn money from their sales. That would be more than a decade before the Great Depression. Hobo Nickels began appearing across the US about the same time the Buffalo Nickels were issued. Who would take the time to individually re-carve the coins and why would anyone do it? The overall appearance of Hobo Nickels was artistically changed by hand carving a new image of the Indian head profile, but on many re-carved coins the bison/buffalo was also transformed. The exception being ‘Love Tokens,’ those beautiful and romantic re-carvings so popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Yet Hobo Nickels is a general term which, when loosely used, includes all re-carved coins. Because more Buffalo Nickels have come under the creative tooling hand of individuals (particularly hobos), the capricious artform has taken on the name of those artists and the coin. There is no evidence of when the first artistically inclined person decided they could make the coin more attractive or comical. Want even more coin collecting information, market insight and in-depth collecting guides? Try the latest issue of Coin Collector magazine today! Click here to order a copy. Of course, many other re-carved coins of the US, UK, South Africa or Spain have been obtained by collectors, but there can be few other series of coins, US or otherwise, which have been tampered with to the extent of Hobo Nickels. Their favourite coin-of-choice was the above mentioned Buffalo Nickel series. This branch of coin collecting is commonly referred to as Hobo Nickels because the great majority of such pieces were created by Hobos in the United States during the Great Depression. The result is a dramatic change from the coin’s original appearance. These are general circulation coins on which the obverse (Indian head) or reverse (buffalo) central device, sometimes the complete surface, has been re-carved by talented individuals. If the term 'Hobo Coin' or 'Hobo Nickel' is strange to you, perhaps some background on this art-form is in order. These aberrations, nonetheless, have found a niche in numerous collections. Made from actual US coins struck for circulation, these pieces no longer look the way they did when they left the mint. A good number of coin collectors who have an interest in the US Buffalo Nickel series (1913-38) are believed to have at least one so-called ‘Hobo Nickel’ as a conversation piece.
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