Coins were circulated long after they became illegible. We are working on a
site where George II coppers were in use at least til 1800 or thereabouts,
with no legible inscription whatever. Recovering the portrait of the King
required numismatic detective work and not a little educated guessing. The
one dateable coin was 1738. I'm sure that the illiterate residents of this
site accepted the coins wholly on weight, custom, feel, and faith.
 
Unfortunately, most site reports depict only legible coins, which conveys
the false impression that we find nothing else. We have chosen to
illustrate all the coins from our site, in an effort to show the extreme
conditions that were possible in circulation. I believe this is a more
intellectually defensible position than merely choosing to show numismatic
goodies.
 
We all agree that punched or locketed coins were not unusual keepsakes. I
should point out, however, that it was not an entirely folk pastime. Some
were professionally made, and quite handsome. My great-great-grandfather
sent his fiancee a gold French coin inscribed as a souvenir of New Orleans.
A jeweler obviously smoothed the reverse side, engraved the inscription,
and enclosed the whole thing in a bezel for suspension as a necklace.
 
Now for something completely different: "skunky" beer is so called because
it smells like skunks, and this is caused by light damage. Use dark brown
bottles and your beer will not go skunky. There was a brand called Canadian
Ace, brewed in Hammonton, New Jersey, that was bottled in half-gallon clear
jugs (99 cents) and was invariably skunky. Guinness, at the opposite
extreme, resides in a nearly opaque brown bottle.
 
Green bottles apparently don't do the trick, either. Safeway in Richmond
once sold a skunky shipment of green-bottled Norwegian Rignes beer for a
buck a case (more than a few years back) at the store closest to the VCU
campus. Do you think anybody complained? Do you think they noticed?