Shredded Money Smells Like Decaying Corpses, Which Is Probably a Metaphor For Something

If you’re in Seattle, you’ve probably driven (or ridden the bus) by novelty item manufacturer and retailer Archie McPhee’s. If you’ve ever purchased a boxing nun, a plastic finger puppet shaped like a monster, or a pair of Handerpants, you’ve probably bought one of their products. (They tend to show up everywhere, especially in little baskets by the checkout.)

Well, Atlas Obscura just did a piece on How a Novelty Store Does Money, and you should definitely read the entire thing, but I want to focus on just one part:

The Strange Perils of Running a Novelty Item Empire

In another strange case, the store bought a couple of pallets of shredded money that had been destroyed by the U.S. Treasury. […] As it turns out, you can only sell shredded money as a novelty within a strict set of guidelines, including keeping the amount less than one dollar bill and encasing it in tamper-resistant packaging, like a clear plastic keychain. And with no easy way to repackage and sell the bales of destroyed cash, it simply sat in their warehouse, which is when the real problem started.

“One of the things you don’t know about money is that it is covered in human skin,” says [Director of Awesome David Wahl]. “So as it gets hot out, it basically starts smelling like human flesh.” The stench of the dead, rotting skin was overpowering, and any time the shredded money had to be dealt with, workers had to wear ventilator masks and gloves. Eventually, they were able to sell the reeking bails back to the original buyer at a steep loss.

I’ve never noticed a human flesh stench coming off my money, but I’ve never had pallets of cash in my house either. I wonder if Birdman has ever noticed any smells coming off the $1M he keeps in his bed:

Rapper Birdman Sleeps on $1 Million in Cash

Any Billfolders noticed… um… the scent of human decay coming off of the fragile symbol that unfairly represents the value of human life?

Anyone want to talk about our bodies literally breaking down into our money, which in turn emits the fragrance of death whenever it is collected and stored in large quantities?

Or… do you just want to talk about who’s given and received Archie McPhee stuff as gifts?

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