Why do we say "A Bad Penny Always Turns Up"?

Background:

A disreputable person will always keep returning.

An early use of this expression is found in the Adams Family Correspondence, which consists of a wealth of letters written between 1761 and 1782. Beginning with courtship letters between John Adams and Abigail Smith (later Abigail Adams), the collection includes many letters between husband and wife, letters from the children to their parents, and correspondence between Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

But the notion of a penny being bad (that is to say counterfeit or underweight) dates back much earlier, at least to Ancient Greece, when coins did not represent a value, they were the value, so the practice of cutting off small parts of them in order to melt the pieces into counterfeit currency was rife --a process that was easier than it sounds as coins were not perfectly round.

The term 'bad penny' was sufficiently established in English by the late 14th century for William Langland to reference the term in his prose poem Piers Plowman (section 18).

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