There apparently really is a market for everything. People in China are selling their fingernail clippings online as ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. For example, a woman from Hebei province was selling her fingernail clippings for about $21 for roughly two pounds of clippings. She had been collecting them since she was a child and decided to make money from them. Traditional Chinese medicine uses fingernail clippings to treat conditions like stomach problems in children and tonsillitis.
This isn’t a new thing, nor is it just a “home remedy” market. Companies that make traditional Chinese medicine buy nail clippings from schools and villages, then wash, dry, and grind them into powder that gets mixed into medicine. Each adult only grows about 100 grams of fingernails per year, so collecting enough to meet demand is hard, and prices are high as a result. However, the companies only accept fingernail clippings and will not buy toenails, so there are some standards.
Source: Oddity Central
