A few years back, undoubtedly during a slowdown in the economy, Lloyd's Bank of London decided to attempt to solve the paper clip paradox. It tracked a batch of 100,000 paper clips within its bank. Here is what it found: 25,000 were simply lost "in the shuffle," swept up or vacuumed into oblivion; 19,413 served as card game chips; 14,163 were twisted and made useless during phone conversations; 7,200 were used as hooks for belts, suspenders or bras; 5,434 were used to pick teeth or scratch ears; 5,308 were used as nail cleaners; 3,196 were used as pipe cleaners.