Del Romines revived the hobo nickel by documenting it. In the early 1980s the numismatist wrote the first book on the subject, Hobo Nickels (1982), which numismatic sources treat as the dividing line between old and modern hobo nickels. By naming and cataloging a fading Depression-era folk art, the book turned it back into a living hobby.
That is the tidy version. The honest version is more interesting, because the same book that saved the art also nearly buried it under a flood of fakes. Everything that feels modern about collecting hobo nickels today – signed work, attribution records, the premium on provenance – grew out of the mess that one reference book set loose.
Was the hobo nickel almost a lost art?
By the middle of the twentieth century, the Depression-era tradition of carving Buffalo nickels into tiny relief portraits had faded close to obscurity. The men who cut coins on the road were gone or forgotten, and only a handful of numismatists still knew the work existed. If you want the origin story – the boxcars, the anonymous carvers, the two masters who anchored the craft – it lives in our piece on the history of hobo nickels. This article picks up where that one ends, at the moment the art came back.
The question worth answering is not who carved the first one. It is why, decades after the tradition dried up, people started carving nickels again at all. The answer is a book.
What did Del Romines and the 1982 book actually do?
Numismatic sources are unusually direct about the turning point. As the standard account puts it, “a major event occurred in the early 1980s, demarcating the transition from ‘old’ to ‘modern’ hobo nickels. This was the publication of a series of articles by numismatist Del Romines on the subject of hobo nickels.” Those articles led to Hobo Nickels in 1982, the first book anyone had written on the craft.
Naming a thing matters more than it sounds. Before Romines, a carved Buffalo nickel was a curiosity with no vocabulary and no reference. After Romines, collectors had a term, a documented tradition, and a way to talk about what separated an original piece from a new one. That distinction – original versus modern – is a direct product of his work, and it still organizes the hobby. We cover how that split plays out for buyers in original versus modern hobo nickels.
Romines was not only a writer. A carving of his, cut in 1981 on a 1918 host nickel, has come up at auction, which tells you he worked the coins himself and did not just study them. Keep that in proportion, though. His lasting weight is the scholarship, not a carving reputation. He documented the art, and the documentation is what changed everything.
How did the same book fuel a wave of fakes?
Here is where the story stops being a clean rescue. A reference book does not only teach collectors what to look for. It also teaches copyists what to reproduce. Once the designs of the original masters were cataloged and explained, they became a template.
The two largest copyists of the modern era, John Dorusa and Frank Brazzell, together produced more than 20,000 carved nickels, most of them copies of the designs of Bo Hughes, the most celebrated of the original carvers. Twenty thousand pieces is not a handful of forgeries slipping through. It is enough volume to distort a young market and to plant confusion that collectors still untangle today. If you want to understand who Bo was and why his work was worth copying, see George Washington Hughes, the carver known as Bo, and his contemporary Bertram Wiegand, known as Bert.
The most human beat in this whole history is that Romines saw it happen and felt responsible. The Romines writing itself reflects the worry, arguing that had the first book never been published, the many non-artistically talented fakers and cheats would have had nothing from which to start their scams. That is the founder of a revival watching the flood he started and wishing he could take some of it back. It is also, oddly, proof the book mattered. Nobody counterfeits an art that no one wants.
How did signing and attribution fix the problem?
The hobby’s response to the flood is the reason it grew up. The fix was disclosure. Prominent collectors leaned on the copyists to stop passing new work off as old, and the pivotal moment came when pressure from respected numismatists such as Bill Fivaz convinced Dorusa to stop carving Bo’s “GH” initials and to put his own name or initials on his pieces instead.
That sounds small. It was structural. Once a carver signed his own work, a modern piece stopped pretending to be a Depression-era one, and the whole market could breathe. Signing, disclosure, and attribution became the norms that separate an honest modern carving from a deception. They are also the practical skills a buyer needs now, which is why we keep detailed guides on authenticating hobo nickels and spotting faked hobo nickels. The reason those skills matter at all traces straight back to the copyist wave of the 1980s.
Who turned copying back into art?
The revival did not stay stuck in imitation. By roughly 1995, Ron Landis, an engraver working in Arkansas, began producing carvings of a quality that reset expectations for what a modern piece could be. He was not alone. The carvers generally credited as the groundbreaking innovators of the pre-2000 modern era are Landis, Arturo DelFavero, who signed as “Cinco de Arturo,” Sonny Carpenter, and Bill Jameson, known as Billzach.
What separates these four from the copyists is intent. They were not reproducing Bo’s designs to fool anyone. They were using the Buffalo nickel as a canvas for original work, the way the first carvers had, and doing it with modern tools and skill. That is the moment the revival matured from a documentation project into a genuine living art form. The community they seeded is the subject of modern hobo nickel artists, and the way the craft itself shifted across the two eras is covered in original versus modern carving style.
Why does the Original Hobo Nickel Society matter?
Every durable hobby eventually needs a home, and the revived art got one in 1992 with the founding of the Original Hobo Nickel Society. The OHNS focuses on folk art derived from the 1913 to 1938 Indian Head and Buffalo nickels, and it does the unglamorous institutional work that keeps a small field honest: attribution, auctions, and recognition programs, including the Bo Award named for Hughes.
The society reportedly grew out of a slide presentation at the 1992 American Numismatic Association Summer Seminar, though the detail worth anchoring to is the founding year and the mission, not the origin anecdote. What the OHNS gave the revival was permanence. A book can start a movement, but a society sustains one. We keep dedicated pieces on the Original Hobo Nickel Society and the Bo Award and hobo nickel recognition, and the society’s conventions and events are where the living community actually gathers.
What does the revival mean for a collector today?
The work did not stop with Del Romines. Joyce Ann Romines, who carried his research forward, published an updated and expanded edition in 1996, keeping the reference current as the modern field grew. Between the original book, the update, and the scholarship that followed, a collector now has real ground to stand on, which was not true before 1982.
Practically, the revival’s guardrails tell you exactly what to look for. Age alone means nothing. A signed, attributed piece by a respected carver, with documented provenance, is worth pursuing. An unsigned nickel presented as old, with no history behind it, is the exact problem the hobby spent forty years learning to avoid. If you are building a reference shelf, start with where the Romines books and later resources sit in a working library, laid out in our hobo nickel reference books and resources guide. That is the least expensive protection a collector can buy, and it is the direct inheritance of the man who documented the art in the first place.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Del Romines?
Del Romines was a numismatist and coin carver who wrote the first book on hobo nickels, Hobo Nickels (1982). He documented and named a fading Depression-era folk art, and numismatic sources credit his work as the point where old hobo nickels gave way to the modern era. He also carved coins himself, including a piece cut in 1981.
What did Del Romines’ 1982 book do for hobo nickels?
It revived the hobby. By cataloging the tradition and giving collectors a reference and a vocabulary, Hobo Nickels (1982) turned a near-forgotten craft back into a living pursuit. It also created the original versus modern distinction that still organizes collecting, and, less happily, it handed copyists a template that fueled a wave of fakes.
When was the Original Hobo Nickel Society founded?
The Original Hobo Nickel Society was founded in 1992. It is devoted to the folk art carved from 1913 to 1938 Indian Head and Buffalo nickels, and it runs the attribution, auction, and recognition programs, including the Bo Award, that give the modern hobby its structure and keep a small collecting field accountable.
Why did the hobo nickel revival lead to so many fakes?
A reference book teaches copyists as easily as collectors. Once the original designs were documented, two carvers, John Dorusa and Frank Brazzell, produced more than 20,000 nickels between them, most copying Bo Hughes’ work. The scale of that output forced the hobby to adopt signing and attribution as protection, which is why provenance matters so much today.
Are modern carved hobo nickels worth collecting?
Yes, when the work is honest. A signed, attributed carving by a respected modern artist, with clear provenance, holds real value that tracks execution and reputation. Age by itself is not the measure. An unsigned piece passed off as vintage, with no documented history, is exactly what the hobby’s signing and attribution norms exist to guard against.
