When an automated-teller machine refused to return her bank card, Diana Collier did not think much of it. But when two check-guarantee cards also failed to work, she thought something might be fishy. She was right: her $60 eel-skin wallet had apparently demagnetized her cards.
Collier, 25, of Pittsburg, Calif., is not the only victim of trendy eel-skin accessories. John McCosker, director of San Francisco's Steinhart Aquarium, has received numerous inquiries about a possible connection between eel skin and malfunctioning bank and credit cards, and he believes there may be one. The skins come from the slithery saltwater hagfish, also known...