This is the sort of thing they cover under Sage Advice in Dragon Magazine. Unfortunately, I haven’t got the Dragon Archives CD, or I’d grep the history of the controversy for you.
I’ll check my Dragon archive tonight. It’s time to read “Floyd” again, anyway…
Wow, I just spent an hour lazily dreaming of the good old high school and college days, playing Tunnels and Trolls, loving it, then being forced by conspiracy into the world of Gygax and Arneson, spending hopelessly stupid amounts of cash on all sorts of useless paraphernalia, but loving it because, at its heart, the concept of a game where you played a role was endlessly enjoyable. (sigh of contentment)
But for all of you who play the ‘game’ under the assumption that, if it isn’t in the books, it ain’t allowed, I can only say that it is too bad you lost sight of the original idea behind Dungeons and Dragons, and got caught up in the mercenary vision of Mr. Gygax, who couldn’t leave a good thing alone when money was to be made from it. My Cleric/Magic-User always enjoyed her Ring of Bee to Flower Turning, and the DM’s in our world enjoyed giving her reasons to use it… 
Re: too much copper in the dungeons. My last group of players dealt with the (literally) tons of copper they found by making up a bunch of multi-part molds of one gnome who had the misfortune to be turned to stone several times in one dungeon (hee! a nest of Medusae and basilisks! What fun!). They put the molds into a portable hole, along with a crucible, big portable magic fire-making thingie, and some tools. They began leaving little garden gnomes molded out of pure copper everywhere they went, in a variety of interesting poses!
DSYoungEsq wrote:
A ring that turns bees into flowers?
Well … I did play around with a spell that turned aardvarks into microwave ovens for a while. That sounds about equally, ahem, useful.