Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad
xoB sent this along, and I did see it somewhere else earlier, can't remember where.
Folk artists have used just about every material on earth. That includes earth and dirt, as last week linkers were interested to see perfectly round, highly polished balls of dirt as folk art from Japan.
When the US first minted the buffalo nickel in 1913, the practice of carving a new face onto the nickel was started, because the coin was thick and its metal was malleable.
Nickels were carved by several practically unknown artists - including actual hobos - and those early works are now collectable. But modern nickel-scratchers keep up the practice and create new works, and most in the set above are modern.
Wikipedia entry
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Hobo nickels are definitely the modern art form but as minting goes back to ~500 BC that's actually the oldest era when coins were probably carved. Of course that's a bit of speculation but if you consider that originally the 'mints' were actually individual castings of coins done by artisan workers you realize that you're going to have artists whose profession is handmaking coins, and they are surely going to do some custom work!
At any rate these coins are just absolutely stunning and there is a certain romance that goes along with picturing hobos riding a car and 'whittling' away on a nickel as a creative outlet. Thanks for this.