Less History, More Mystery
There’s a certain fascination that can be generated old stuff, or at least antiques. Who owned my seventy-year-old safety razor before me? Where has it been? What have my 1930s Sheaffer fountain pens written? Where have they been? What have they done?
The problem with these sorts of questions is that we often think we want the answers - until we actually get them. At least that’s true some of the time. My standards are pretty low, but I’m not sure I’d willingly use a blade in my razor that used to be a coin (h/t to Bruce Schneier). Turning a one rupee (about 0.025 USD) coin into six or seven razor blades worth thirty-five rupees (around 0.86 USD), even in volume, doesn’t seem like it has the kind of margin to allow really first-class quality control, for one thing. For another, unless coins in India are made of high-carbon steel, I have my doubts about what kind of an edge you’re going to be able to put on blades made from them.
For comparison purposes, you can fairly easily buy Turkish “Derby Extra” razor blades online for about the same prices as people in India and Bangladesh are paying for Rupee Razors; ten to fifteen cents per blade, and the platinum-coated, stainless-steel Derbys are widely regarded as among the best razor blades in the world. (To be fair, the Gods only know where the metal for Derby blades comes from; I could be shaving with recycled pieces of a WWII tank, for all I know. Or steel from the World Trade Center, even. I dunno, and I’m probably happier, for all the inherent irrationality, in not knowing. Ignorance really is bliss, sometimes.)
Coin shortages generated by currency with higher intrinsic value than face value are nothing new, but usually coins are valued for their metal content as scrap; this is the first I’ve ever heard of coins having greater-than-face value for what they can be turned into. Actually, no, I take that back - I have a couple old Chinese brooches, made (probably) in the 1920s, which were demonstrably handmade out of silver dollars. Still, it’s uncommon, at the very least.
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