While not actually real coins... I am pretty keen on them for aesthetic purposes... they are a great way to get your grandkids interested in coins and then move them on to the real thing. You can see some pretty cool ones here
I didn't see any carved wooden nickels. These are carved out of actual buffalo nickels. They are commonly refered to as Hobo Nickels although these are far more artistic that "hobo nickels". There is someone that posts his carvings here on cointalk and does some fantastic work with the new nickels as well. Maybe someone else can give you the user name of that poster. Do a search here for carved or hobo nickels and you will see a lot of these.
Found it. His user name is billzach, heres a link to one of his post for a 2006 nickel he carved. http://www.cointalk.org/showthread.php?t=13080
I just recently became a member of the Original Hobo Nickel Society. Here's the link: http://www.hobonickels.org/
