What is a Hobo Nickel? | History, Value, and Collectability

 

What is a Hobo Nickel? | History, Value, and Collectability 

Hobo nickels are modified coins, often Buffalo nickels, that have been hand-engraved to feature an altered set of designs. While hobo nickels aren’t especially rare, they have a large following of collectors who buy, sell, and trade them. You might even find booths buying and selling hobo nickels at major coin shows around the United States!

While hobo nickels are named after the United States five-cent piece (nickel), the term can actually refer to a wide range of small-denomination U.S. coins. The introduction of the Buffalo nickel in 1913 kickstarted the engraved coins that most people know as hobo nickels today. The Buffalo nickel’s low cost, ideal size, and thick designs made it ideal for coin engravers.

Contrary to its name, the hobo nickel was not exclusively produced by hobos, traveling American laborers who are most commonly associated with the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While hobos did commonly produce hobo nickels, coin dealers and metalworkers were also responsible for creating the hundreds of thousands of hobo nickels scattered throughout the USA today.

On this page, learn more about the curious hobo nickel, including the altered coin’s history, value, and collectability.

A Brief History of the Hobo Nickel

In the United States, the term “hobo nickel” typically refers to small-denomination U.S. coins that have been altered with unique artwork. However, the hobo nickel is only one of a wide range of different global traditions that involve the artistic mutilation of circulating currency. Popular predecessors to the modern hobo nickel include the “potty coin” and a series of engraved coins called “love tokens.”

Below, we’ll trace the history of the hobo nickel, from its early predecessors to the coin’s heyday in popularity to modern variations of the iconic practice of creating art using circulating coinage.

Predecessors to the Hobo Nickel

Unsurprisingly, the practice of engraving artwork onto existing coins predates the popular hobo nickel. During the 18th and 19th centuries, coin alteration in the United States was a popular pastime among metal engravers. Two popular coin engraving practices that predate the hobo nickel include:

1. Love Tokens. Love tokens were produced by smoothing coins using a machine. Then, engravers would put their own designs onto the coins, often by hand. This was such a popular pastime that it is believed that there are hundreds of thousands of these coins floating around.
2. Potty Coins. To make this popular coin, engravers would alter seated liberty half dimes, dimes, twenty-cent pieces, quarters, half dollars, and dollars, replacing Lady Liberty’s seat with a toilet. 

This practice of altering coins as an art form was not restricted to the United States, either. Engravers from around the world commonly etched designs into their own coinage to create new forms of art. In the U.S., the landscape of the altered coin collecting scene was forever changed with the release of the iconic Buffalo nickel.

Hobo Nickels (1913-Onward)

The Buffalo nickel is one of the most iconic coins in American history, and it is commemorated today through the annual release of the American Gold Buffalo Coin. But as Buffalo nickel specialists already know, the series was especially susceptible to wear through circulation. This is part of the reason why “no date” Buffalo nickels are so common in circulation. 

But the core design flaw of the Buffalo nickel was actually what made it the perfect tool for coin engravers. The Buffalo nickel was relatively soft compared to other circulating coins, and its thick designs were comparably easy to whittle down until they were flat. This made smoothing the coin easier, a core step in the process for engravers who wanted to add new designs to the coin’s faces. 

While hobo nickels were being produced both inside and outside of the United States prior to the Buffalo nickel, the introduction of the Buffalo nickel in 1913 jumpstarted the popularity of the coin among engravers. Its softness and the largeness of its obverse design made it ideal for engraving, leading to the production of hundreds of thousands of hobo nickels in the decades that followed. 

Modern Small-Denomination Coin Sculpting

Aside from a dedicated group of coin engraving veterans, including Bo and Bert, many hobo nickel designers transitioned from the Buffalo nickel to other coins in the 1940s, as the Buffalo nickel was slowly becoming less common in circulation at this point. New artists entering the scene broadened the scope of artwork found on hobo nickels, using new technologies and engraving tools to enhance the consistency and accuracy of their designs. 

When numismatists began to study hobo nickels more closely in the early 1980s, a slew of new artists flooded the field. This led both to a further diversification of the art form and the introduction of so-called counterfeits into the hobo nickel market. Some artists deliberately copied the work of two famous engravers, Bo and Bert, with a few even going so far as to copy their signatures on the faces of coins they engraved. 

With access to innovative smoothing and engraving technology, the hobo nickel artists of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s were able to improve the complexity of their designs, incorporating popular culture, media, and famous heads-of-state into their artwork. Even today, the artform continues to evolve, and a large community of hobo nickel engravers are active in 2025.

Who Made Hobo Nickels?

Hobo nickels were made by tens of thousands of engravers throughout the history of the art form. The introduction of the Buffalo nickel in 1913 revived public interest in the practice, and the Buffalo nickel’s distinctive qualities lowered the skill barrier required for new artists to begin producing their own Buffalo nickels.

In the 1980s, access to new technologies made it easier than ever for Americans to create their own hobo nickels, even on coins less amenable to hand-carving than the original Buffalo nickel. Several major hobo nickel engravers made names for themselves during this period, including Arturo DelFavero, Sonny Carpenter, and Bull Jameson, three of the most popular hobo nickel engravers active from the 1980s until now.

Bert and Bo – Veteran Hobo Nickel Engravers

Bertrand Wiegand (Bert) and “Bo” were two of the most prolific producers of classic hobo nickels. Each of these men created thousands of hobo nickels spanning a wide range of subjects. Today, original Bo and Bert hobo nickels are considered some of the most valuable among collectors, and one piece by Bert Wiegand set a record in 2021 when it sold at auction for $31,800. 

In fact, a series of numismatic articles about Bo’s work published by Del Romines is often credited with reviving public interest in the hobo nickel as an art form. Both Bo and Bert are considered pioneers of the hobo nickel, and their creations are considered a hallmark of the so-called golden age of hobo nickel coinage.

Are Hobo Nickels Valuable?

Hobo nickels can range from nearly worthless to extremely valuable, depending on a number of different factors. As a general rule of thumb, hobo nickels originally produced from 1913 until the 1950s are considered the most valuable to collectors, particularly if they were penned by industry legends of this classic era, such as Bert or Bo. 

Many hobo nickels from the modern era are worth little, since such a large number of these coins were produced in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Still, hobo nickels from notable engravers may fetch a decent premium. For new collectors who cannot afford originals from renowned artists like Bo and Bert, these affordable newer hobo nickels are a great way to begin collecting.

Hobo Nickel Auction Records

A hobo nickel penned by Bertram “Bert” Wiegand made headlines in 2021 when the coin set a new auction record for a hobo nickel. The coin, depicting Bo’s impression of a friend named Elizabeth, sold for $31,800 at a Heritage auction on January 22nd of 2021. According to Coin World, this was a 31% increase since the last hobo nickel to set a record, which happened in 2013.

Along with his friend and mentee, Bo Hughes, Bert traveled the country by rail, often exchanging handmade hobo nickels for money, food, or lodging. Bert continued his work for decades, creating hobo nickels for guards when imprisoned during the 1930s and even selling hobo nickels via flea markets in the 1940s. 

As the collecting of hobo nickels continues to become a more popular hobby among numismatists, it seems likely that other Bert and Bo originals will eventually eclipse this record. 

The Hobo Nickel Collector’s Scene 

There is a large and dedicated network of hobo nickel collectors around the world, particularly in the United States. The Original Hobo Nickel Society (OHNS) is one of the largest hobo nickel collector societies in the world. The OHNS even holds an annual auction for collectors, and some of the hobo nickels submitted to auction can reach high prices, especially if they are originals from Bo or Bert.

Collector societies for hobo nickels exist all over the United States, and coin shows around the country frequently feature booths displaying hobo nickels for sale or trade.

Final Thoughts: What is a Hobo Nickel?

Hobo nickels are coins that have been engraved with new designs over existing U.S. coins, most commonly the Buffalo nickel. For generations, these coins have been a cornerstone of American numismatics, shedding light on the lives and art of some of America’s hobos, a class of migrant workers who flourished in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

While modern hobo nickels can be affordable and accessible to new collectors, hobo nickels penned by notable engravers, such as Bert and Bo, can sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction. Even today, over 100 years since the materially flawed Buffalo nickel jumpstarted the hobo nickel’s popularity in the United States, collectors all over the country gather annually to celebrate this unique and distinctly American category of numismatic art. 

You might also be interested in:

• Buffalo Nickel Values – How Much are They Worth?
• What is a “No Date” Buffalo Nickel?
• Which Nickels Contain Silver?