The artist creates really great coins, i own all but one of his other coins he’s already released (the missing one he only has available in copper, which i do not like and doesn’t match the others in silver. Plus not crazy about the design).
These hobo coins are just an extension of the coins he’s already made. They’re the same size and weight. I do see these as an homage to the actual art of carving the coins… though mass producing hobo coins would be intrinsically impossible without automation… might as well stamp them.
Personally i’ve been holding off on buying these because the silver plating stretch goal hasn’t been released and it’s the only finish i’m interested in.
Perhaps, but i don’t really buy into that. I find hobo coins to be a pretty interesting almost long forgotten medium, so doing his next coin series as an homage to it makes sense and it’s a relatively cool concept.
Also as i pointed out, making actual hobo coins on a small scale to sell would be time consuming and i would presume it’d be expensive. I’m sure people would find fault with that angle too… here he is making his own as stamped coins to make it accessible. If you have a problem with that then don’t buy it?
The kickstarter aspect confused me, too. It’s not like modern-day stamped replicas of hobo coins (or ‘tributes to hobo coins’) aren’t already all over eBay.
Go look at “hobo nickels” on eBay. Virtually anything priced under about $25 and/or available in multiple copies is a modern-day, usually stamped, replica.
There are also some rather nice modern-day hand-carved replicas, though they generally go for about $100 and up.
Oddly, genuine antique hobo nickels (or at least genuinely hand-carved real nickels) are much cheaper on Etsy than on eBay.
Sorry. I think it was the “Kickstarting modern hobo coins” headline - I’m sorta used to “Kickstarting [CoolThingX]” as “creating a cool new thing via crowdfunding,” as if modern hobo coins didn’t already exist.
But, yes, of course, there’s no reason an artist can’t use Kickstarter as an advance-order mechanism for new works in an existing genre. Having preorders provide the capital needed to begin production is a great enabler for all sorts of art and crafts and other products, whether they’re a clever new idea or just a new execution of an existing idea.
I just needed to recalibrate my own idea of what Kickstarter is good for. (-:
