Money for Old Rope

I can find nothing on the Internet to corroborate this assertion, other than in places like The Answer Bank - a forum that is open to anyone, and therefore not to be trusted.

In reference to this phrase ("money for old rope"), Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable – a much more believable authority – says this: "In former sailing days, crew members would unpick the odd lengths of rope lying about the ship and sell the strands and strips to shipyards in the next port of call. There they would be hammered into the gaps in the deck planking before being covered in pitch."

The Phrase Finder, however, disagrees: "What's lacking [from the case for it being about sailing ships] is anything that actually supports the link between the caulking of sailing ships and the phrase. The killer blow is really that the phrase wasn't known in English until the 1930s – well after the heyday of sailing ships, in the British author James Curtis's novel Gilt Kid, 1936".

The only explanation the Phrase Finder can offer is that the phrase is "most likely to have originated in a similar manner to 'money for jam'. This was a British Army expression from around WWI. The reference is to the ubiquity of jam in the soldiers' diet and that it had little value."