I posted a Hobo Nickel on Reddit

Reddit is a website for sharing images and links. The website gets hundreds of thousands of viewers each day. I posted a recent coin and it goted voted up to the front page. It recieved hundreds of comments from mostly people that have never heard of Hobo Nickels. It was much more contreversial Than I ever expected. Lots of people were offended that someone would destroy the old nickel to create art. I had never really experienced this before. On the other hand there were lots of people that loved it. Many comments had nothing to do with the hobo nickels at all really. I think its worth the read.

.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/jz2tk/my_hobby_is_recarving_old_coins/

Add www to front of link. The filter wouldnt let me add link

Harpuahound wrote:Reddit is a website for sharing images and links. The website gets hundreds of thousands of viewers each day. I posted a recent coin and it goted voted up to the front page. It recieved hundreds of comments from mostly people that have never heard of Hobo Nickels. It was much more contreversial Than I ever expected. Lots of people were offended that someone would destroy the old nickel to create art. I had never really experienced this before. On the other hand there were lots of people that loved it. Many comments had nothing to do with the hobo nickels at all really. I think its worth the read.

.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/jz2tk/my_hobby_is_recarving_old_coins/

Add www to front of link. The filter wouldnt let me add link

hehehe the comments of the people that don`t know the hobo nickels is very interesting thank you This web "Reddit" seem interesting

John, I,ve been a coin carver about 15 years and realized some years back we coin carvers have a 'comfort' zone, it includes Buyers of Hobo Nickels and collectors, other engravers, some on coin forums, friends, etc..When we leave our comfort zone, be prepared for anything.

Agreed Billzach, I was stunned at some peoples comments and there strong distaste for what I was doing. Granted they were a minority. And in such a place as Reddit (internet) they tend to amplify there feelings because there totally anynomous. But it was at that time that I realized I had only been talking to collectors and other engravers and friends and family.

There were something like 1 Billion buffalo nickels minted in the range of years they were being made... I don't think any nickel carvers will be making a dent in a dent that would be within another dent.

If there were 100 hobo nickel carvers that carved 100 coins per year (each), after 10 years we could say that we had reduced the amount of minted coins by one one hundredth of one percent.

Lets carvem all up and give them something to cry about...

I just read quite a few of the comments... I can't believe someone would rather preserve a coin that was probably the umpteenth coin made that day which some coin press spit out at a hundred per minute, than own a piece of artwork that someone personally slaved over for hours... That blows my mind. It's almost like getting yelled at for drawing on a piece of drawing paper.

I can see the cartoon in the funny papers now... It's like an Eskimo getting grief for carving an ice block in a land where all there is is ice.

Yes, because there aren't 10,000 full horn buffalos out there. I could see if you were carving up a rare coin, but buffalo nickels are common as spit.

The coin I posted was a 1937. I looked it up, 93 million of them minted that year alone. My guess is the same people complaining dont carpool or recycle probably bought their wife or girlfriend a diamond ring. All using limited resources. I think you could call what we are doing recyling in a sense. One of my favorite comments in defense of what we do was a quote by Salvador Dali "Every creation first starts with the destruction of something".

If you modify old nickel people are scandalized for it,but you are valorizing it,however if you think when you smoke a cigarette is like burning your money, and it does not pass anything