More Examples of Hobo Nickels

Left: A man wearing pince-nez glasses and a fedora. Artist unknown.

Right: A rabbi carved by one of the premier hobo nickel artists, George Washington “Bo” Hughes. It is signed “GH – 21” under the beard. 

Left: One of George Washington Hughes’s favorite reverse carving subjects—a mule with a shack in the background. It is thought that the shack represents Hughes’s childhood home in Mississippi.

Right: A carving of a tombstone on the reverse of a "buffalo nickel." A woman carved on the obverse of the coin is taken to be the dead Elizabeth. Presumably a tribute to a lost love, this nickel was made by Bert Weigand, Hughes’s teacher, mentor, and another “knight of the road.”