About Coffin Nachtmahr
Coffin Nachtmahr is a yoyo player, designer, and artist from East Baltimore, Maryland. Growing up in a neighborhood marked by poverty and gang violence, he struggled to find his place — compounded by a stutter that made social connection difficult. He discovered competitive throwing in the early 2010s and found in that community the acceptance and creative outlet that had eluded him elsewhere. His skills developed rapidly; those who have worked with him describe him as a virtuoso with prodigy-level technical ability.
In 2015 he founded OhYesYo, a Baltimore-based yoyo company through which he has designed and released at least seventeen models over a decade — ranging from the widely sought Nightingale to a titanium Echelon limited to thirty units. His design process is deliberately analog: all throws begin as sketches on graph paper before moving to manufacturing. He has collaborated with One Drop, 2Sick Yoyos, Rain City Skills, iLinx Toys, and other brands on co-designed throws and artist-edition colorways, including the 2019 Freq.Mod — a modernized reissue of the Recreational Revolution Freq.wav, a throw he credits as foundational to his practice after first encountering it at the 2012 U.S. National Yoyo Contest.
In 2016 Baltimore’s Early Light Media released Throw, a ten-minute documentary directed by Darren Durlach and David Larson. The film premiered at the Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, Colorado, where it won the Festival Director’s Choice Award, later earning a Vimeo Staff Pick and multiple ADDY Awards for cinematography and storytelling. The documentary brought Nachtmahr to broader public attention, including a National Geographic short feature and a performance at Light City Baltimore. He has remained active since, continuing to release throws under OhYesYo and offering custom-painted yoyos by commission alongside work in painting, music, and skateboarding.
In Their Own Words
From a 2019 interview with Voyage Baltimore:
On identity: “I hate wearing a mask or being something/someone I'm not.”
On the Freq.Mod collaboration with iLinx Toys (2019):
“The yoyo that kept me playing for hours on end for years. Ross handled all the CAD work between two Freq.wavs hand measuring every angle on them both — I was left with double checking the work and going forward into manufacturing.”
