Talk:Hobo nickel

Untitled
The webpage posted on the OHNS website is one I generated using Steve's material at his request and obviously with his permission. I'm not certain why you think that my posting of this material to Wikipedia is a copyright infringement. Verne R. Walrafen 29 June 2005 22:16 (UTC)

Hobo Nickels/Temp created.
OK folks... I've made all your suggested changes and moved the pictures down into the text since you wanted to stack the three all in the center which looked really gross. The only thing I put back in that you blew away is the reference giving the provenance of the article... the fact Steve gave this material in a talk at the Long Beach Coin Show. I feel this really needs to be included and someplace in your material I even read that such things should be certain to be included. I trust you won't have problems with the TEMP version I just created. I note you were right there to catch my first attempt at posting... I can only hope you will respond just as quickly to my modifications so I can get this page up and running. I got locked out all day yesterday because I was flagged as using an IP address of someone who had done something wrong when my IP address was something totally different. I proved that with PING but nobody responded or changed my being blocked. Once I "got in" today I haven't logged off in case something similar happened again. Thanks- Verne

Hobo Nickels/Temp created.
Whoops... forgot my timestamp. Verne R. Walrafen 29 June 2005 23:16 (UTC)

Suggestion for illustration
I think it would really help illustrate this article if there were a picture of an unaltered coin directly next to the picture of the altered version, so that readers could see how the features of the original coin were used. Perhaps there could even be three versions, with the unaltered, altered, and an overlay of the two. Anyway, just a suggestion. -- Creidieki 06:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Softness?
The article says that the nickels were the coin of choice for alteration because of their relative softness. However, the article on the nickel talks about how hard the coin is. The cent or silver coins would have been softer. Perhaps a better explantion for the popularity of the nickel for these purposes was that it was a large coin for the money and that it had a lot of raised surface area to work with. But I'm not an expert by any means.--RLent 19:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

how to ?
How do you carve a nickel? What tools do you use? Do you pound it flat first?
 * definatly no flattening, you want the image that's there allready, use that as a start. Tools, just real hard alloy steel exacto knives and such.  How engravers do dies.   Jo  e  I  06:28, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

How they got their name
This article seems to be mostly skipping over the fact that these coins got their name from the homeless wanderers that so often carved them. Then there's this quote from the article "The term "hobo nickel" is a generic term for altered nickels, and does not imply that hobos made most of the early carved nickels." that seems to be false. The majority of the information I've seen on Hobo Nickels states that they were indeed used by hobos around 1913-1938. Even the Original Hobo Nickel Society states this in their introduction page, "These nickels, carved by yesterday’s homeless, were traded for meals, a place to sleep, a ride, or other favors." I understand that the term "Hobo Nickel" may be used in a generic fashion now, but based on what I've read, I think Wikipedia should at least mention more about its origins. 68.18.23.52 08:08, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Public domain?
All of the images in this article are tagged as public domain, but it's not clear that the uploader owns these. At least one image seems to be scanned from a book, and the others are photographs of contemporary artwork. What claim is being used to justify these as public domain? Pburka 23:57, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Another example of why I quit trying to contribute to Wikipedia!
I gave up trying to maintain my Hobo Nickel article entry years ago because people with no knowledge about them kept making changes after me voiding the validity of the article. I figured that, at least, the photos would be helpful to the public. I just now revisited the article to find that all photos had been stripped out! Apparently explained by this posting: "All of the images in this article are tagged as public domain, but it's not clear that the uploader owns these. At least one image seems to be scanned from a book, and the others are photographs of contemporary artwork. What claim is being used to justify these as public domain? Pburka 23:57, 10 November 2007 (UTC)"

Since I personally photographed ALL of those coins (NONE were scanned from a book by the way!), I certainly had the right to place the resultant photographs in the Public Domain. Apparently somebody felt they knew more than I did however. Another example of why I quit trying to contribute to Wikipedia!

By the way... just because I photographed an actual plate coin used in the Romines book and labeled it "Romines The Hobo Nickel p45" DOES NOT mean the photo came from the book and that my photograph could not be put into the Public Domain! Another case of assumptions being made without adequate information. Verne R. Walrafen (talk) 15:38, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Late response, but for the edification of future readers: A photograph of an existing work of art (itself not in the public domain) is a derivative work bound by copyright, regardless of the photographer's intent. If Verne's clearly-faulty understanding of copyright was the law of the land, then one could simply take photographs of, for instance, the pages of a book, and label the resulting photographs "public domain". Egglamk (talk) 20:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)