Most collectors come to hobo nickels through a single coin. You see a Buffalo nickel with the Indian’s profile recut into a bearded man in a derby hat, and the craft pulls you in before you know anything about who carved it, when, or what it should cost. That is the moment the trouble starts. The hobo nickel field is small enough that there is no app, no slabbed-population census deep enough to lean on, and no auction house running weekly sales of nothing but carved nickels. What there is, instead, is a body of literature – and for a hobby this niche, it is unusually deep. A serious collector can assemble nearly the whole canon for modest money, and a good portion of it now costs nothing at all.
Treat that library as buyer’s insurance, not as a vanity shelf. Every attribution mistake, every modern carve sold as a 1930s original, every piece copied straight out of a book’s illustrations is a loss that the right reference would have caught. The point of owning these books and bookmarking these archives is not to look studious. It is to keep from overpaying for the wrong coin. What follows is the canon, organized by what each resource actually protects you from.
Why a small library beats guessing
In a bigger collecting field, the market does your homework. Population reports, price guides, and high auction volume mean a newcomer can buy reasonably well on consensus alone. Hobo nickels offer none of that cushion. Authenticity and value both live in print and in archives here, not in your gut and not in a seller’s description.
The carvers themselves make this clear. The classic period produced a handful of identifiable hands – chief among them “Bo,” George Washington Hughes, and his teacher Bertram “Bert” Wiegand – alongside a great many anonymous artists. Telling a genuine period carve from a later imitation, or attributing an unsigned piece to a known hand, is a learned skill. It comes from seeing hundreds of documented examples and from knowing the vocabulary the specialists use to describe them. Both of those come from the literature. Skip it, and you are buying on faith.
The founding texts: the Romines books
The hobby’s literature begins in 1982 with Del Romines – Delma K. Romines – and his book Hobo Nickels, published by Lonesome John Publishing Co. of Newbury Park, California, at roughly 106 pages. It was the first book ever written on the subject. Its full descriptive title gives a sense of its reach: Hobo Nickels: Prisoner Nickels, Shop Tokens, Modern Engravings – An Extensive Study of Hobo Nickels. More important, it was the work that first put names to the carvings, documenting Bo, Bert Wiegand, and a roster of anonymous artists who had been invisible until then. Almost everything written since rests on this foundation.
In 1996, Del’s wife, Joyce Ann Romines, updated and republished the work as The Hobo Nickel: An Exclusive Upgrade of Hobo Nickel Artistry through DLRC Press, about 107 pages, adding material that supplements the original. It was later offered as an e-book as well. Keep the two straight: the 1982 Hobo Nickels is Del’s; the 1996 The Hobo Nickel is Joyce Ann’s. They are distinct books by distinct authors, and conflating them is one of the most common errors in casual write-ups of the hobby.
There is a caveat worth stating plainly, because it bears directly on authentication. The 1982 book’s clear illustrations were reportedly used by some carvers to copy Bo’s designs onto later coins. That does not diminish the book – it is foundational and belongs on the shelf – but it is a useful reminder that documentation cuts both ways. The same images that teach you to recognize a classic hand also taught some people to imitate it. Read the founding texts for the historical baseline, and pair them with the grading and attribution tools below.
Both Romines books are out of print. Look for them through the Original Hobo Nickel Society or the used-book market rather than expecting a current edition, and treat any asking price as a moving target on a thin used market.
The working reference: Alpert’s OHNS Hobo Nickel Guidebook
If you own only one book, make it this one. Stephen P. Alpert’s OHNS Hobo Nickel Guidebook is the Society’s own in-print reference and the closest thing the hobby has to a standard manual. It runs about 126 pages, spiral or wire-bound so it lies flat on the desk while you work, with more than 700 enlarged photographs. It covers the purpose of hobo nickels, the methods and tools used to make them, and the components of a carving, and it includes artist galleries for putting names to hands.
Its most practical contribution is a shared grading language. The Guidebook lays out the OHNS grading tiers – Superior, Above Average, Average, Below Average, and Crude – and illustrates each one. Once you have those categories in your eye, descriptions in listings and catalogs stop being marketing and start being information. You can read a piece against a known standard instead of against a seller’s enthusiasm. If you want to see how those tiers play out in practice, our guide to grading hobo nickels walks through what collectors look for.
The Guidebook has been reprinted repeatedly; published sources reference a third printing, and a newer notice on the Newman Numismatic Portal records a fifth printing. The sensible way to cite it is as the standard reference, kept in print by OHNS and currently in its latest printing – then confirm the current edition and availability directly with the Society before you buy. Purchase it through OHNS rather than chasing it on the secondary market.
The living record: BoTales and the OHNS auction catalogs
Books give you the baseline. The hobby’s living record – what is being discovered, attributed, and sold right now – comes from the Original Hobo Nickel Society’s quarterly magazine, BoTales, included with membership. It runs illustrated articles on carvers both historic and modern, hobo and Depression-era history, related collectibles, and, crucially, prices realized. The December issue typically carries the Society’s annual auction catalog.
That auction issue is the part to value most. OHNS formed in 1992 and has grown to roughly 450 members, and over three decades its catalogs have become a price-and-artist record you cannot reconstruct anywhere else for the specialist club market. Membership is the most direct way into the community’s working knowledge, and it is the soft recommendation this article will make: if you are collecting hobo nickels with any seriousness, joining the Original Hobo Nickel Society puts both the current literature and the people who write it within reach.
Free and online: NNP, the Internet Archive, and Heritage’s realized prices
Here is the fact that reframes the whole question of cost. Much of this canon is now free.
The Newman Numismatic Portal hosts a selection of OHNS publications, including the complete BoTales run from 1992 to 2021 and early OHNS annual auction catalogs, all free to read. That is the deepest specialist literature in the hobby, available without hunting down rare out-of-print copies. Individual issues are also mirrored on the Internet Archive. Start your reference shelf here, before you spend a dollar.
For value, the single most current tool is not a book at all – it is a database. Heritage Auctions maintains a free, searchable archive of realized prices, the actual hammer results rather than estimates. Within its broader archive sit on the order of a thousand sold hobo nickels spanning 2007 to 2026, filterable by year and grade. To use it, search the hobo nickel category, then filter to sold lots and sort or narrow by grade so you are comparing like to like. Pair Heritage with Stack’s Bowers archives and the OHNS December catalogs, and you have a price reference more current than anything in print. If you want a worked walk-through of reading those results, see our companion article on hobo nickel auction records.
The mainstream cross-check: MEGA RED
It is worth owning one mainstream book that takes the hobby seriously, both as a sanity check and as a bridge to wider numismatics. The Deluxe Edition of the Guide Book of United States Coins – “MEGA RED,” from Whitman – carries a nine-page, full-color appendix on hobo nickels. It illustrates each OHNS grade and pictures Classic, Later Classic, and Modern pieces, so you can cross-check the Society’s grading language against a second published source.
The appendix also credits the research of Stephen Alpert, Marc Banks, Arturo DelFavero, Don Farnsworth, Bill Fivaz, John Kraljevich, and Del Romines, and it names modern carvers including Ron Landis, Joe Paonessa, Alex Ostrogradsky, Howard Thomas, Chad Smith, Keith Pedersen, John Schipp, and Aleksey Saburov. That a flagship general price guide devotes nine color pages to carved nickels, edition after edition, tells you the hobby has earned a place in mainstream numismatics. For a newer collector, MEGA RED is the comfortable on-ramp.
Learning the craft: general engraving books
If you want to understand how these coins are actually cut – which sharpens your eye for authentic tool work – you will have to step outside the hobo nickel shelf, because no book teaches the carving directly. The long-standing standard is James B. Meek’s The Art of Engraving: A Book of Instructions, about 208 pages with more than 1,300 photographs and drawings, covering design and layout, materials, anatomy, lettering, and engraving from beginner to advanced. Be honest about what it is: a firearms-engraving manual, not a hobo nickel book. The graver technique transfers directly to coins, but the subject matter does not. Read it for the craft, not for the hobby, and it is free on the Internet Archive if you want to sample it first.
For a living, current sense of what is in print and obtainable, the Engraver’s Cafe forum runs a long, collector-curated thread specifically on hobo nickel books. It is a good place to confirm availability before you go hunting, since the printed canon goes in and out of stock.
Building your shelf on a budget
You do not need to spend much, and you should not spend anything until you have read the free material. A sensible order:
- Start free. Read BoTales on the Newman Numismatic Portal and search realized prices on Heritage. This alone puts you ahead of most casual buyers.
- Add Alpert. Buy the OHNS Hobo Nickel Guidebook through the Society for the grading vocabulary and the photographs. If you buy one book, buy this.
- Join OHNS. Membership brings BoTales and the December auction catalog on a current basis, plus the people behind them.
- Fill in the history. Add MEGA RED for the mainstream cross-check, then the Romines books from the used market as you find them.
Confirm current editions and availability with OHNS rather than trusting any single listing, treat used-book prices as fluid, and remember why the shelf exists in the first place. A reference library is the cheapest protection a hobo nickel collector can buy. The coin you do not overpay for, and the fake you do not bring home, will cover its cost many times over. For the next step, read our companion pieces on authenticating hobo nickels and spotting faked hobo nickels – the library above is what makes both of those skills possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best book on hobo nickels?
If you own only one, make it Stephen P. Alpert’s OHNS Hobo Nickel Guidebook. It is the Society’s own in-print reference – about 126 pages, spiral-bound, with more than 700 enlarged photographs – and it lays out the OHNS grading tiers and artist galleries you need to read a piece against a known standard. Buy it directly through the Original Hobo Nickel Society.
Who wrote the first book on hobo nickels?
Del Romines (Delma K. Romines) wrote the first book on the subject, Hobo Nickels, published in 1982 by Lonesome John Publishing Co. at about 106 pages. It first put names to the carvings of Bo Hughes, Bert Wiegand, and many anonymous artists. His wife, Joyce Ann Romines, published an updated version, The Hobo Nickel, in 1996. They are two distinct books by two distinct authors.
Where can I read about hobo nickels for free?
The Newman Numismatic Portal hosts the complete BoTales magazine run from 1992 to 2021 and early OHNS auction catalogs, all free to read, with individual issues also mirrored on the Internet Archive. For values, Heritage Auctions keeps a free, searchable archive of realized prices covering on the order of a thousand sold hobo nickels. Start there before buying any printed reference.
Is there a hobo nickel price guide?
There is no fixed price list, and prices in this thin market shift constantly, so treat any figure as a moving target. The best evidence-based value tool is Heritage Auctions’ free archive of realized prices, paired with Stack’s Bowers archives and the OHNS December auction catalogs. BoTales also reports prices realized. Read sold results, not asking prices.
Do any books teach you how to carve a hobo nickel?
Not directly. The standard hand-engraving manual is James B. Meek’s The Art of Engraving, about 208 pages with more than 1,300 illustrations, but it is a firearms-engraving book – the graver technique transfers to coins, the subject matter does not. For current, collector-curated recommendations, the Engraver’s Cafe forum runs a long thread on hobo nickel books.