Introducing Scraggly

By Fred 'Guido' Avan RM908

In February of 2011 I picked up average rendering on eBay for the fair price of $88. During the auction I had worried if someone had noticed that there was a match on page 15 in Steve Alpert's book. To my surprise it seems no one did, and I ended up walking away a happy collector.

That got me really excited and subsequent additional searching turned up the third carving shown below in the 2005 OHNS Auction Catalog #13. It was lot number 116 which sold for a total of $275.

Finally the first carving closed on eBay and I won it for what I considered a bargain price of $140.

The name Carvetoon was established by Ralph Winter when I mentioned Owen Covert's suggestion of Carl Toon, my choice was the Comic Stripper. His works show a real stylized type of quality that is rare and maybe unique to his body of work. It seems to me that this artist made the jump from making Love Tokens to his own versions of Hobo Nickels, thus bridging the gap between the 19th and 20th century.

The Carving Characteristics for “Scraggly” are listed as follows:

1. Scraggly beard extends out into field.
2. Hair, eyebrows, and beard are carved.
3. Derby hat has straight thin brim with hatband and fancy bow with horizontal and vertical lines.
4. A small but very distinctive ear.
5. All carvings are on early date coins.
6. Field dressed with LIBERTY and date remaining.
7. No collar.
8. Profile unaltered.