Almost every hobo nickel you will ever see was carved on one side. The bearded man, the skull, the self-portrait, the top hat – they all live on the obverse, where James Earle Fraser’s Native American profile gives a carver a head and shoulders to transform. The back of the coin, with its standing bison, usually goes untouched. That is not an accident or a failure of nerve. It is a sound default. The reverse is a different kind of canvas, and reaching for it doubles your artistic opportunity and your risk in equal measure. This guide is about carving the Buffalo nickel reverse with the same judgment you bring to the front – about earning that second side, not assuming you should always take it.
Beyond the Indian profile
The obverse invites portrait work because it already gives you a face. You are re-cutting a profile that is, in proportion and placement, close to what you want the finished carving to be. A beard becomes a different beard. A headdress becomes a derby. The underlying geometry of a human head carries you a long way.
The reverse asks a harder question. Fraser’s design there is an American bison – a full-body animal standing in a small landscape. If you carve it, you are not reworking a face. You are reshaping an entire creature and the field of metal around it. That is a genuinely different design problem, and it is the reason a clear-eyed reverse guide is rare. Most coverage stops at the obverse. If you want to work the back of the coin well, you have to think like someone composing a whole scene, not someone editing a portrait.
What is already on the back
The Buffalo nickel was struck from 1913 to 1938, and Fraser modeled its reverse bison on a real animal – a bison named Black Diamond. Knowing the design history matters because the coin you pick up was not made as one consistent thing across that whole run.
There are two reverse types. The Type 1 reverse of early 1913 placed the words “FIVE CENTS” on a raised mound beneath the bison. The Mint quickly found that the denomination, sitting on that high ground, wore away too fast in circulation. The Type 2 redesign enlarged the legend and moved the bison onto flat ground, recessing the lettering so it would survive handling. That is why most circulated survivors show a flatter, more worn reverse than you might expect.
For a carver, the practical reading is simple. Before you plan a single cut, identify which type you have and how much wear it carries. A heavily circulated Type 2 with a soft, flattened bison is a very different starting block than a sharper coin with crisp horn and hair detail. The existing relief is your raw material, and you need to know its real condition before you commit.
The thin-planchet reality (read this twice)
Here is the single most important fact in this entire article. A Buffalo nickel is 21.2 mm in diameter, 1.95 mm thick, weighs 5.00 grams, and is struck in 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel with a plain edge. Roughly 1.95 mm is all the depth you have, and on a two-sided carve that depth is shared between both faces.
Read that again. When you cut relief into the obverse, you are spending metal that the reverse also depends on. Carve a deep portrait on the front, then try to cut deep relief into the back over the same area, and you risk thinning the planchet to a fragile sliver – or carving clean through it. A hole or a paper-thin spot ends the piece. There is no recovering it.
The alloy compounds the problem. The copper-nickel mix is hard, hard enough that its relief and that hardness gave the Mint striking trouble in its day. For a carver, hard metal means more tool pressure, more fatigue, and more chance of a slip on a coin you have already invested hours into. This is why depth budgeting matters more on the reverse than almost anywhere else in the craft. You are not just managing the look of one face. You are managing a shared, finite thickness across two.
If you take nothing else from this guide, take this: plan your total depth across both sides before the first cut, and leave yourself margin.
Registering to existing relief
The technical heart of a good reverse carve is registration – working with the relief that is already on the coin rather than fighting it. The bison gives you a body, a leg line, a back, and a ground line. The strongest reverse work re-uses that existing mass instead of trying to grind it flat and start from a blank field.
Think of the bison’s body as a block you can reshape into another animal. Its bulk can become the body of a different creature. The ground line under its hooves can serve as a horizon for a small scene. The raised legend and mound, or the flat-ground lettering, are features to design around, not obstacles to erase. Every bit of relief you can repurpose is depth you do not have to remove, and on a 1.95 mm planchet, depth you do not remove is risk you do not take.
This is the same layout discipline that governs careful obverse work, and it applies doubly here. Sketch your subject to scale first. Transfer it onto the coin so you can see how the new creature maps onto the old one. Register the key features – the spine of the bison becoming the back of your new animal, the existing leg line anchoring new legs – so that proportion holds and you are guiding metal rather than improvising into it.
Common reverse transformations
The original-era carvers who did venture onto the back tended toward subjects that suited the bison’s silhouette. Documented reverse work from the classic period includes turtles, donkeys, boxcars, and small figures. There is a celebrated 1937 piece in which the bison was reworked into an elephant, attributed to George Washington “Bo” Hughes, one of the most respected names in the tradition. Hughes also produced a famous two-sided nickel known as the “DICER,” which is cited as a masterwork of the craft.
A word of caution about that masterwork, because it bears directly on how you should think about your own work. Hughes’s finest two-sided pieces are historical outliers. A great fully realized two-sided original-era nickel can be exceptional, and the best of them have reached record results at auction. That is a fact about a handful of museum-grade pieces made by a master decades ago. It is not a price guide for a reverse carve you make this weekend, and you should never read it that way.
What the historical record actually teaches is subject selection. The animals that worked – heavy-bodied, four-legged, standing in profile – worked because they matched what the bison already was. An elephant, a different bovine, a horse: these sit naturally onto the existing mass. A subject that fights the bison’s shape forces you to remove more metal, and you already know what removing metal costs here.
One side or two?
Now the real decision. Before you touch the reverse, ask yourself an honest question: does this piece actually want a two-sided story, or am I carving the back simply because it is there?
Rarity cuts both ways. Two-sided hobo nickels have always been uncommon – the Original Hobo Nickel Society is explicit that reverse carvings are far less common than obverse portraits, and that two-sided pieces were made only on rare occasions. A genuinely great two-sided piece stands out precisely because it is rare and hard. But a weak reverse does the opposite. It does not just sit there neutrally. It drags down a strong obverse, because now the eye has two faces to judge and one of them is the weaker work. Rarer does not mean automatically more valuable. A mediocre second side reads as overreach, not ambition.
So the rule is this: a reverse carve adds value only when it tells a coherent, two-sided story executed at the same quality as the front. If the back does not connect to the front, or if you cannot carve it as well as you carved the obverse, the coin is stronger with the bison left honest and intact. Earn the second side. Do not take it by default.
Practice and sequence
If you decide a piece deserves both faces, do not learn the reverse on a coin that matters. Practice on culls – worn, common-date or dateless Buffalo nickels, or modern five-cent pieces – before you risk anything better. The reverse’s typical wear pattern actually makes a low-grade cull the honest choice anyway, since a flattened, common bison is exactly the kind of coin that loses nothing by being reworked.
Never sacrifice a key date or a sharp, full-horn collectible to a risky two-sided experiment. That is true of all carving, and it is doubly true here, where the failure mode is carving through the coin entirely.
On sequence, plan which face you carve first and protect the finished side while you work the other. Many carvers complete one face, then pad and shield it – against the bench, against the vise, against their own hand – while cutting the second, so that hours of finished work are not marred by a slip or a clamp. Because depth is shared, your first side also tells you how much room you have left for the second. Carve conservatively on side one if you know side two is coming.
Honest finishing and disclosure
A two-sided piece has to read as one object, which means the finish has to be consistent across both faces. If your patina, your texture in the field, and your tone match on the obverse but not the reverse, the coin looks like two separate efforts stuck back to back. Treat the finishing as a single decision applied to the whole coin.
And be honest about what it is. A modern two-sided carve is modern work. It should be sold and described as a contemporary piece, with the two-sided nature disclosed plainly, never passed off as something older or attributed to a hand that did not make it. The tradition has a long and well-documented history, and it is healthiest when modern carvers are straightforward about their own place in it. Sign your work. Date it if you can. Let the piece stand on its own merit.
Where to go next
The reverse is the road less traveled for good reasons, and also for one bad one – that most carvers never plan for it properly. If you understand the bison you are starting from, respect the 1.95 mm you have to work within, register your new subject onto the existing relief, and reserve the second side for pieces that truly earn it, the back of the nickel becomes a real canvas rather than a place to make an expensive mistake.
If you are building toward your first reverse, a few companion guides on this site are worth reading first. Start with why the Buffalo nickel is the carver’s canvas to ground the whole subject, then study high relief carving and depth limits, which is the direct companion to the thin-planchet warning above. For subject selection, animal motifs in hobo nickels covers reworking the bison into other creatures, and the work of Bo Hughes puts the elephant reverse and the two-sided DICER in context. When you reach the value question, how to value a hobo nickel goes deeper on when a second side helps or hurts. And before you risk a Buffalo at all, work through practicing on modern nickels, common mistakes new carvers make, and background texturing for reworking the reverse field. Read them, practice on culls, and earn the second side before you cut it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should you carve the reverse of a Buffalo nickel?
Only when the piece truly earns it. A reverse carve adds value when it tells a coherent two-sided story executed at the same quality as the obverse. A weak reverse drags down a strong front, so most coins are better left with the bison intact. Carve the back by choice, not by default.
How thick is a Buffalo nickel and why does it matter for reverse carving?
A Buffalo nickel is about 1.95 mm thick (21.2 mm across, 5.00 g, 75% copper and 25% nickel). On a two-sided carve that single thickness is shared between both faces, so cutting deep relief on both sides risks thinning the planchet to a fragile sliver or carving clean through it.
What is the difference between the Type 1 and Type 2 Buffalo nickel reverse?
The Type 1 reverse of early 1913 placed FIVE CENTS on a raised mound under the bison, which wore away quickly. The Type 2 redesign moved the bison onto flat ground and recessed the lettering to survive circulation. Most surviving coins are worn Type 2 examples with a flatter reverse.
Does a two-sided hobo nickel add value?
Not automatically. Two-sided pieces have always been rare, and rarity cuts both ways. A masterful two-sided carve stands out, but a mediocre second side reads as overreach and lowers the piece. Value comes from quality and a coherent story across both faces, not from the mere fact of carving the back.
Which subjects work best for a Buffalo nickel reverse carve?
Subjects that match the bison’s existing silhouette – heavy-bodied, four-legged animals standing in profile, such as an elephant, a horse, or another bovine. Documented historical reverses include turtles, donkeys, and boxcars. Matching the new subject to the existing mass means removing less metal and taking less risk.
Which Buffalo nickels should you use to practice reverse carving?
Practice on worn, common-date or dateless cull Buffalo nickels, or on modern five-cent pieces. A flattened, low-grade bison loses nothing by being reworked. Never sacrifice a key date or a sharp full-horn collectible to a risky two-sided experiment, where the failure mode is ruining the coin entirely.