A viral video of ornately engraved coins with elaborate mechanical movements is drawing renewed attention to an artist working in a medium with a long folk tradition. Russian artist and master ...

Here’s some food for thought: Hobos are shrewd capitalists. At least, as Adam Leech explains it, those who carved hobo nickels in the early 20th century were. Hobo nickels — coins whose bas-reliefs ...

While hitchhiking feels like a distant memory, it wasn't an uncommon practice. Transient life was particularly popular during the Great Depression, as it was many people's only means of getting around ...

IN 2003, Candace DeMarco Kagin of Tiburon was walking through a coin show when she saw a nickel carved with the image of a golf caddy wearing a long, cutaway coat. It turned out the coin was an ...

Imagine an alternate world where our coins are graced not by unsmiling presidents but Frankenstein, ET, skulls, pirates—hell, even a butt. That’s the funny, fanciful world of Italian artist Paolo ...

Adam Leech, who owns Leechpit, a vintage clothing and collectibles store in Colorado Springs, has been obsessed for years by an unusual folk art form called hobo nickels. Starting with buffalo nickels ...

The rise and fall of the trillion-dollar coin wasn't the only weird numismatic news this month. It was said that the coin, a crafty re-stocking of the Treasury to escape the debt-ceiling crisis, would ...

Things you can buy with a nickel: A sip of Starbucks coffee. A gumball, maybe. Things you can buy with a 1913 Liberty Head nickel: A SoHo loft. A gumball, maybe. Spending-wise, the nickel doesn’t earn ...